ROMA ROMA ROMA

Hello everyone!

I just got back from spending an amazing weekend in ROME! This past weekend was reserved for the championship of the Swiss Cup, which my team wasn't playing in, so we had it off from practices and games. We wanted to make use of a communal off weekend, so Crystal and I, along with another American friend playing over here named Lizelle, decided to take an EasyJet flight down to Rome for the weekend!

(Now, as you're reading this, you have to promise not to judge based on the amount of times I talk about going to a gelateria or getting hot chocolate, because all of us acted like kids when it came to those two things this weekend, and I realize it sounds like that's practically all we ate. It's kind of true, but we ate some pizza and some pasta too!)

We got there on Friday afternoon, after a lovely wait in the Geneva airport, filled with airport food and people-watching. After getting into our hotel near the Ciampino Airport, we decided to brave the train system (Lizelle went to school in Long Island, so for her it was no big deal, but for me it would have been terrifying!) to make our way into the city. After surveying the train schedules and metro maps, we decided to get out at the Colloseo stop.. Little did we know that as you surface from the metro, you can literally see the Colliseum while going through the turnstyles to get out!

We were starving, so we got snacks from a vendor truck before touring the Colliseum and Roman Forum after hours. We walked around until about 8 pm, and then decided it was time to sit down, as our feet were already getting sore. We stopped at a cute cafe, where I got my first taste of Italian hot chocolate, which is more like a melted hershey's bar in a cup with whipped cream on top than what we think of when we make hot chocolate. I was in heaven!

After our time at the cafe, we walked around a little more before stopping at a crepe place for an actual meal before heading back to our hotel. We had run into a couple other Americans on the street, so we all sat together eating crepes and listening to (and sometimes joining in to sing)random songs like Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," which was hilarious. We ended up back at the hotel around 1 or 2 in the morning, determined to make it out for more tourist things the next day.

After a good start at the hotel's free breakfast (hard pastries and biscuits with tang) on Saturday we took ourselves back to the Colliseum to get a real tour guide to actually show us what we were looking at the day before. Like everyone else around us, we were floored by the history behind the structures we were looking at, because it's pretty crazy to be standing next to, in, around, or on top of things that are 2000+ years old. Our guide took us around the Colliseum and then we headed up towards Palatin Hill to see all the good stuff up there before leaving through the Forum ruins.

We stopped at another small cafe/Gelateria to satiate our cravings for, in the case of Crystal and Lizelle, gelato, or in my case, melted hershey's goodness in a cup, and planned out our late afternoon and evening. We had loved going on the tour with the guide, only because he told all the interesting stories that we never would have thought of, but we had to decide which sites were worth shelling out for a guide and which we could do by ourselves. After some discussion, we decided to hit up the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and the Piazza Navona that night, without having to pay a guide.

While we didn't always know the significance of what we were seeing, we had a great time exploring the streets of Rome and seeing the amazing sights. The evening ended after a delicious meal of pizza and calazones in a small restaurant near the Piazza Navona, and we headed back towards the Colliseum to check out the nightlife in the area. We had a great time with some other Americans that we met along the way, and ended up back in Ciampino after a great day of sightseeing and a great night of dancing!

Sunday morning we decided to make our way out towards St. Peters to see the Vatican and try to hang out with the Pope. We walked around in St. Peter's for a while, saw the tombs of the Popes (which I thought was kind of creepy, but maybe that was just me) and tried to go to the Vatican Museum, but we had missed the 4th Sunday of the month closing time of 12:30 pm. We settled for gelato and hot chocolate instead of the Sistine Chapel, and decided that we would try to do it on Monday morning before our flight.

After missing the Vatican museum, we made up for it by walking probably 20 km throughout the rest of the day. From the Vatican we walked down an awesome touristy street called Via Coia di Rienzo, admiring the shops and stopping at vendor booths to look at souvenir merchandise. We made it to the Castel Sant'Angelo, decided that it was pretty enough from the outside not to pay the entry fee, and then walked down the river to the outdoor skating rink Carnivale events that were going on. After Lizelle danced with a guy on stilts and Crystal high-fived a man on a unicycle, we continued our walk down the river until we crossed at Cavour to end up near the Mausoleo di Augusto.

We walked up what we had nicknamed "Laser Street," (Via del Corso, the one that ends at the beautiful Piazza Venezia) to the Piazza del Popolo, before our pace started slowing and we realized that we were starving/sore/tired/overwhelmed and needed to stop for dinner. We made it to the Spanish Steps (which, unfortunately we were too tired and hungry to really appreciate at the time) and then found ourselves in an amazing little restaurant near the Trevi. We dined on delicious pasta and then had dessert of tiramisu and cheesecake, all while chatting with a stereotypical italian man that was doing his best to hit on us throughout dinner.

With our bellies full, we decided to walk a little more before going back to Ciampino. By night, we saw the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica from the outside only, walked past some funny looking guards at the Quirinale, and probably passed some structures that I studied in Art History before making it back to the Cavour area and the same crepe place from the first night to have (what we thought was) our last gelato.


Monday morning we got our earliest start of the trip in an attempt to squeeze the amazingness of the Vatican Museum into a short morning before our flight. Fortunately we weren't tricked by the tourguides that told us it would take at least 3 hours to get into the Sistine Chapel, and we made it in in 30 minutes! The Chapel was amazing, and while we would have loved to have more time to explore and really appreciate what we were seeing, we had to make our way back to Ciampino before our flight at 3 pm. But don't worry, we made it to one more gelateria for some gelato and hot chocolate before we took off...

Despite my anxiety that we would miss our flight, Lizelle and Crystal stayed confident that it would all work out, and fortunately we made it with time to spare! We arrived back into Geneva around 5 pm, and made it to Neuchatel by 8 ish after it was all said and done. It was an amazing trip, and I had so much fun!

Tonight I might be headed to Fribourg to celebrate Carnivale with Jac and friends, and this weekend we play Jac's team for the first match of the second round of playoffs. It will be funny for me to be playing against my old teammate, but I'm excited to have another match soon. After spending the weekend in relative warmth, it's a bummer to be back in the chilly freezer of Cheseaux, but coming back really was like coming home, and I was happy to sleep in my own bed again last night.

I hope it's warmer wherever you are, and I'll talk to you all soon!

Love, Anna

Playoffs, Loeche, and friends that speak english!

Hello Friends and Family!

I just got home from our pre-game morning practice, and I have about 4 hours until I head back to the gym for tonight's match. We play against Volero again, (we lost 1-3 last time in Zurich, and it's a best of 3 match series) but this time we're at home, which will hopefully give us some sort of advantage. Playing on the same court as Robyn ah-Mow was unreal, but I could definitely see why she is a volleyball legend. She is super super competitive, and if the ball is within 5 feet of her, it'll never go down!

After my last post, I spent the weekend in Loeche-les-Bains at the chalet of my teammate Kristel. She brought another friend up, and we met her brother there with his 2 friends. The group was pretty funny, because every person there spoke at least 2 languages, but not always the same ones. 3 of us spoke only French and English, 1 spoke only German and French, 1 spoke German and English, and 1 spoke German, French, and English. The dinner conversations were hilarious as we tried to translate between all 3 languages!

At the chatet I tried raclette for the first time.. For any of you who don't know, raclette is basically a meal of cheese and potatoes (I'm ok with that!!) but it's special because each person melts their own cheese prior to putting it on the potatoes. It was really really good, and I think that the Swiss are on to something by openly accepting the custom of eating melted cheese as a meal!

The next day we had plans to go skiing (or if you're me, plans to sit in the lodge reading all day out of fear that you might kill yourself or someone else if you strap on skis or a snowboard), but we ended up waking up late and not wanting to pay for a lift ticket for only a few hours. This meant that I would not be hanging out by myself all day, so I was happy! We decided to go sledding instead, and spent the afternoon with a group of kids (probably under the age of 12) who had the same idea as us...

Monday night one of the boys convinced us that we should go down to "Tom's," the local bar. As I walked in, I was greeted by a sign that read "Tom's Saloon, Western Bar," and I knew it was going to be a crazy place! The walls were decorated in the style of John Wayne movies, and even the doors between rooms were those kind that people walk out of in the movies when they have to duel on the abandoned street with tumbleweeds. So there I was, sitting in a John Wayne movie, with my tri-lingual friends, and Gangsta's Paradise came on the radio. It was too much!

On Tuesday the ski runs were closed due to heavy snow and risks of avalanches.. So our group packed up the car and headed to the thermal baths, where we spent the morning lounging in huge pools with seemingly every other person in Loeche. They also had an area of waterslides, etc for the kids, but of course our group jumped at the idea of waterslides! We had a great afternoon and headed back towards Lausanne for practice that evening.

On Wednesday morning, 3 friends from the US arrived to spend some time in Switzerland. My friends Kevin and Brett from Napa and their friend Morgan are on a Euro-trip, and randomly I had talked to one of the boys prior to their departure at the end of January, so they managed to make it to Cheseaux for a couple days.

After lounging on Wednesday, we decided to go to Chateau-de-Chillon for a tourist day on Thursday. The Chateau is one of the most famous in Switzerland, due to it's picturesque location on the shores of Lake Geneva. We had an amazing time touring the Chateau, and by the time we left, the morning snow clouds had disappeared and we had an amazing blue-sky afternoon to enjoy! After my practice that night, we made fondue and declared it a perfect day in Switzerland!

Yesterday I took them to Les Paccots, where Louis had taken me snowshoeing during my first few weeks here. I am definitely not as expert as Louis when it comes to the trails there, but we made it pretty far and ended up at an amazing lookout where the boys had a snowball fight as Morgan and I tried to stay out of the crossfire.

The Americans took off early this morning to continue their travels in Italy, but it was definitely nice to have some visitors for a few days!

I'm off to take a pre-game nap, but I hope all is well with everyone and I hope to talk to you soon!

Love,

Anna

Telecabins and Body Pump

Hello Friends and Family!

It's Friday morning here, and warm enough to be drizzling instead of snowing. I usually would be really bummed by the clouds, but the warmth makes me excited to maybe even go for a run outside! AMAZING!

We played a match last Saturday against Zeiler Koeniz, the #1 team in our league. They have 2 Americans from the University of Washington, and it was fun to chat with them after the game. We lost in 3 pretty badly, but fortunately we had already locked in our spot for playoffs, and the loss didn't really count too much against us. While I don't like losing, it was interesting to see what the top level of competition looks like in Switzerland, and some of their girls were amazing to watch!

I spent Sunday coaching in a small town called Fully, with the same group of girls. After a full day, I went to the chalet of our club's president and his wife, who put together a delicious meal of Fondue Chinoise (Chinese Fondue) for our group on Sunday night. Their chalet is in Nendaz, a beautiful ski town in the alps, from which you can ski in 4 different valleys of ski runs.

On Monday, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and set off for the telecabin, en route to which I saw license plates from basically every country in Europe. After buying lift tickets, we headed up the mountain with a small group of skiers/ snowboarders, and watched as we got higher and higher up the mountain. I was amazed to see some chalets in the middle of the forest beneath us, where the people can take the lift and ski down to their house!

Due to my inability to ski (or snowboard, or do anything that involves balance and coordination and slippery surfaces), Genevieve and I took off hiking which Georges decided to spend the day skiing. Upon reaching the station at the top of the first telecabin, one can choose to ski down multiple runs, some which lead you to different lifts up different mountains. It's like a maze of mountainy snowy heaven for all the snow sports people out there!

Genevieve and I hiked to another lift, and ended up at the top of the mountain, from which we could see the peak of Mont-Blanc not to far away. There is a restaurant at the top, and Georges met us for some hot chocolates and a meal of soup! It was an amazing day and my pictures don't even begin to capture the beauty of the area!

After practice on Tuesday, I went to Neuchatel to visit Crystal, and we spent the evening making videos for our friends on Facebook (we are indeed 13 years old sometimes). On Wednesday morning, we woke up to head to her fitness center, where we would try a fitness class called "Body Pump." We were possibly the youngest people in the class, but everyone around us was using more weight than us and not sweating nearly as much!! After an hour of hell, we left the gym feeling like we had definitely put in our day's work!

On Wednesday, the girls reminded me that there was a men's game after our practice. The men's team plays in Lausanne, at the gym where I go to do fitness. Watching the guys play is almost like watching an entirely different sport, because they are so much more powerful than women. Our team won against the team from Geneva, and it was a fun time!


Yesterday I gave an English lesson to a woman from Cheseaux who is looking to improve her conversation skills. It was fun for me to be on the other side of a lesson for once, and definitely fun to be able to switch back and forth between languages. When she couldn't think of the right word, all I could think was "THAT IS MY LIFE," not being able to think of silly things like "car" or "banana." We're going to be meeting once a week, so I'm excited to help her improve her English!

Tomorrow is our first match of playoffs, against Volero from Zurich. Their setter is Robyn Ah-Mow Santos, who was the setter for our US National Team for a long time. We lost last time we played them, but we took a set off of them, so we know it can be done. Hopefully we can find a way tomorrow!

This weekend I'm headed to Loeche, another ski town in the Alps. I'm going with Kristel (our setter) to her grandma's chalet, where there is not only skiing but also thermal baths. I think I might invest in a good book I can lose myself in while the others go skiing, and I'll get myself ready for the thermal baths!

Hope all is well at home. I miss you all!

Love, Anna