End of Season parties, and then off to the South of France!

Hello Friends and Family!

This last week has been filled with end-of-season team parties, and we've been having a lot of fun!

On Wednesday, we all went to Aline (our capitan)'s house, and feasted on a dinner of raclette. After the delicious dinner, we played a game of Taboo, which , for anyone who doesn't know, is kind of a mixture between charades, pictionary, and some sort of miming-using-puppets game. In English, Talia and I tend to rock at this game, but then again, we haven't played it together since age 14, so some things might have changed. But in French, it's an entirely different story! I was having so much fun, I decided to take a video of our game, just to show the craziness of Taboo in French!

On Thursday I had a chance to go to Geneva to fill in for Jac, coaching at the International School in Geneva. I got there a bit early and explored the Red Cross/Red Crescent Museum, and poked around the United Nations. As I walked along the street, where there would normally be driveways, there were elaborately decorated gates for various embassies, in every language possible. It was crazy to be in the middle of such an international hub!

Then, upon entering the school, it was like I stepped through a wormhole (or used some floo-powder!) to get back to the US for 2 hours. I had a group of about 14 students, between the ages of 11 and 15. In that group, probably 12-13 different countries were represented, because all of their parents work in amazingly international jobs (diplomats, international stock brokers, etc). So not only was I working with a group of kids straight from a United Colors of Benetton ad (Brazil, England, India, Ethiopia, Australia, Sweden, etc), but they all spoke English flawlessly, as if they grew up in Akron, Ohio (minus the kids from England and Australia; they still had cute accents).

Then, class is over, and I walk out of the school, my ears inundated with sounds of languages from every corner of the earth as the parents come to pick their kids up, and I resume my life in Swis-Romande (the French-speaking area of Switzerland). Needless to say, it was a really fun and interesting experience!

Last night the team got together once more for a meal at a Mexican restaurant in Lausanne, where we dined on delicious fajitas before heading out for a soiree in Lausanne. It was fun to spend some time with the whole team at once, and I'm starting to realize that the season really is over!

Today has been a lazy day so far, because tomorrow I'm coaching from 9 AM to 4 PM in Valais with my juniors team. Then, on Monday morning, Lizelle, Jac and I take off on our road trip to the South of France, where we'll be scanning for George Clooney around every corner :)

Love you and miss you all!

Anna

Offseason!

Hello Friends and Family!

As of now, I am officially in my first offseason overseas!

After our series of matches against Jac's team in the second round of playoffs, we played the team from Wattwill for the third round. Wattwill is located in Toggenburg, which is a region located directly across the country from Cheseaux. We played them at home this past Saturday, and then at Wattwill (a 4 hr. drive, each way!) on Sunday. Thankfully we ended up winning 3-2 on Saturday, and swept them 3-0 on Sunday, ending our season on a high note!

There are several girls from my team who aren't playing again next year, so this week we have several year-end nostalgia dinners and team hang-outs. I really enjoyed this group of girls, so I'm going to try to take advantage of being with them for the last time!

After my last coaching session this Sunday, I leave on Monday for the South of France, where Lizelle, Jac and I will be spending next week! My club president and his wife offered to let us stay in their villa in Provence, so we're road-tripping down Monday morning, and staying until Friday. According to Genevieve, their town is within an hour of all the cool things in the south of France: Nice, Marseilles, Cannes, St. Tropez, etc. It's starting to be warm even here (I wore a t-shirt yesterday!) so I'm excited that it might even be beach weather by the time we head south next week!

Othere than season being over, I don't have anything spectacular to report! I can't believe that I'm leaving in 3 weeks, so I'm trying to cram a lot of adventuring into what time I have left.. Then it's back to JFK on April 8, and trying to figure out my plans for summer!

I hope all is well back home!

Love, Anna

Carnivale, Puxy & John visit, and Geneva

Hello friends and family!

It's Sunday afternoon here, and I'm watching outside as the snow clouds loom in the distance. Mother Nature in Switzerland is a tease, because she gives me 3 days of warm(ish) sunshiny weather, then takes it away overnight, and replaces it with gloomy snowy weather. Oh well. Little flowers are starting to pop up, so I know that real spring will be here soon!

Since getting back from Rome, I've had 2 weeks of fun hangouts with my good friend Puxy (Kristen Luxton, a setter from Santa Clara) and her fiancee John (whose Dad, weirdly enough, was friends with my Dad back at Dartmouth. Ha..) We started their time off right by heading to Carnivale in Fribourg with Jac last Tuesday night. In case you don't know, Carnivale is the festival season before Lent, and many European cities celebrate it in some way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival). Some productions are bigger than others, but in general it involves masks/costumes, music, parties in the streets, and very late nights/early mornings.

After realizing that we didn't exactly have access to the same costume boxes that we kept in Santa Clara, Crystal and I were able to use some of Jac's old Halloween costumes to fit in with the Carnivale crowd. I was a Raphael, the ninja-turtle (along with John, who was Leonardo), Crystal was a ladybug, and Puxy and Jac were blue and pink-haired people who wore weird clothes that would keep them warm (is that even a costume??) We had a fun night in the streets of Fribourg, taking in the Euro-style Carnivale atmosphere!

Last Saturday we played Jac's team in the first match of the second round of playoffs. It was really strange to be on the same court as Jac once again, and we were able to talk to each other every once in a while through the net. After the game, Jac headed back to Fribourg, while Puxy, John and I went to a local Cheseaux pub for dinner before heading back to my house for bed.

On Sunday I went to Valais to coach, and met up with Puxy and John in time to go back to my house and share a lovely dinner of Swiss raclette with Louis. I know that I've been here for 2 months now, and that the whole eat-cheese-for-dinner thing should be getting old, but it's not! It was delicious, and we all fell asleep feeling really satisfied!

Monday morning brought drizzly rainclouds, and we weren't sure what to do with our day. We all hopped into the blueberry, and headed first towards a special bakery where Puxy wanted to get a chocolate croissant. However, after 3 failed attempts to get to this bakery, we found ourselves on the way to Geneva, and decided to keep going! We arrived in Geneva in the early afternoon, and waked around the downtown area for several hours. We went to the top of the tower of the Cathedrale St.Pierre, which brought us amazing views of the city. We also found a chocolate shop that sells Toblerone bars that are the size of small children..

My favorite part of Geneva was driving past intersections whose signs said "centre-ville, right. France, left." Puxy had forgotten her passport, so we couldn't turn left, but it was still a cool idea that I could just pop on over to France!

On Monday night we went back to Fribourg to spend the night at Jac's. After an almost perfect night of sleep, sans anything crazy on my part, I ended up waking Puxy up in the morning by rolling over, calling her "Snoop," and whapping her on the back. Oops.. Sorry to anyone who has to share a bed with me!

Wednesday night, Jac and her boyfriend Alex invited me back to their place for a delicious farewell "souper" (in Switzerland, "diner" is lunch, and "souper" is dinner) for Puxy and John, a souper from which I have just barely recovered. Alex, the master chef, brought out a raclette machine, bread, cheese, delicious home-made sauces, and meat, from which we made the most awesome sandwiches ever! I drove home late that night, and woke on Thursday morning thinking about those sandwiches!

On Friday, Kristel from my team invited me to her house in Fribourg for a dinner with her family. Her brother, Eric was there (who had been in Loeche-les-Bains with us a month ago), and I met her Mom and Dad for the first time. It was so fun to see Kristel's home and hang out with her family, because they are so amazingly nice and welcoming!

Yesterday brought me back to Fribourg for our second match against Jac's team. After a 5 game thriller, my team managed to pull out a W, and we were all somewhat relieved that we wouldn't have to play the tiebreak match today. I got to skype with my east-coast fam after getting home, and it was fun to hear about 70-degree weather and a lemonade stand for the twins. Hopefully that weather will head east towards me!

Today will be the definition of a lazy-Sunday for me, and I'm enjoying every minute of it! I hope all is well back home and I'll talk to you soon!

xoxo

Anna