dancing finally

I've finally managed to take a ballet class here!! And after two plus weeks of vegetating, even the uber beginner class had my legs shaking (think this might be a sign or something?). Still, I was so glad to be dancing again.
I took at a small school in downtown Versoix (where my CDL is) called Dance Art. To be quite honest, I wasn't too thrilled with the studio... let's just say the nine-year-olds wobbling around en pointe on bent knees had me cringing inside. But it was certainly a cool experience to take class in French. Ocasionally, the teacher would say a few things in English, but the majority was French. Of course, seeing as ballet is mostly French anyways, it wasn't too much of a difference. But, it was nice to hear all the ballet terms actually pronounced correctly (not that I blame my fabulous U.S. teachers. For the life of me, I cannot manage a French accent)!

I'm still searching for a decent school, but this is a start. As long as I can dance somewhere, it doesn't really matter where.

playing tourist for the weekend

Seeing as we've only just moved, I still feel like a tourist in this country--I don't know the language or customs, and I'm forever asking for directions. However, this does give me the distinct advantage of having the excuse to spend my free time doing fun, tourist-y things.
Take this weekend, for example. I spent Saturday in Geneva, wandering all around the city with a girl from school. I got to see the ridiculously famous and amazing Jet d'Eau (for all of you who don't speak French, that means--rather logically--Jet of Water):(I would also like to assert that this is MY photo, not one I stole from the web... I'm mildly proud, if you couldn't tell.)

We spent quite a while exploring the shopping district. My conclusion: amazing clothes...amazingly high prices. Obviously, when I go back to the States for Christmas, I will get on the plane with an empty suitcase, and return with a full one; I can't expect to buy many clothes here!
Later, we ate at a cute little pizzeria, in a plaza that glowed! (No, seriously... evidence is below) Overall, I was very satisfied with the day.

And then, today, Sunday, my parents and I took advantage of a bargain price ticket to drive around the lake and check out some castles, Chillon and Aigle. Let me tell you, these things are cool. I preferred Chillon, mostly because it was larger and more of it was in it's original condition. Also, this is the famous castle from the famous Prisoner of Chillon, by Lord Byron. Moreover, while touring the famous dungeon of this famous castle, we came across the famous cell of the famous prisoner--and the famous graffiti of the famous poet! Pretty legit, if you ask me. Honestly, while visiting the castle that he wrote about, Byron decided to carve his name into a pillar, and it's still there today.
The weather was gorgeous today, and especially clear. While driving home, we got an especially clear view of Mount Blanc. I'll post pictures as soon as my dad gets around to uploading them off his camera. Overall, a very good weekend.
Dancin' around Chillon Castle...
A view of Aigle Castle.

the sad nonexistence of peanut butter and tofu

No, not together. Fear not, I would never commit the atrocity of consuming peanut butter and tofu together (tofu in sesame peanut sauce, though, yes. Mmm). I do, however miss both foods, seperately. But it seems that the Swiss are slightly less advanced in a few aspects. For one, peanut butter is an "American" thing here... you can only find it at the American store (yes, they have one of those), and the only brands they even carry there are Skippy and the like. I have actually seen one type of peanut butter in the normal Swiss grocery store--Barney's Best. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either. It's one of those gross, sugar-filled, hydrogenated oil-loaded, preservative-packed, really, really bad ones. And it's not even a good bad kind (if you know what I mean), like Skippy is, on occasion, when it's just one of those bad days and you're out of chocolate. Granted, I haven't actually bought and tasted Barney's Best, but seeing as it's the only brand sold in a country that doesn't even sell your basic nut and oil peanut butter, I'm confidently hypothesising that it's not all that good.The other product that the Swiss are sorely lacking is tofu. We actually finally found tofu in a small health food store in Rolle, but it's half the size for twice the price as in the U.S. As a vegetarian, I'm practically addicted to tofu, and I've been relying on a lot of pizza and pasta to get by. While I am a fan of those foods, let's face it--we're not in Italy here, and it gets old pretty quickly. So while I'm extremely happy to have found the small goldmine of tofu that we did, I sorely wish the Swiss would wake up and smell the soybeans. Come on, import more tofu, people!

that school thing

So, today was my second day of school at CDL, the international school where I'm completing my senior year. Seeing as I've only ever attended two schools in my life, and both have been four hundred students or less, this was quite an experience.
CDL is a private international school in Versoix. There are 2200 students--preschool to graduation--of 120 different nationalities. I definitely feel like a minority--there aren't that many Americans, and even though everyone can speak English, most people don't. Although I like most things about CDL so far, I'm definitely not a big fan of their organization. I was somehow not put on any attendence list yesterday, so I spent a lot of the day waiting to get a schedule... I did meet quite a few people, but the school itself isn't super new student oriented, so the other new kids and I have had to fend for ourselves a lot in figuring out where to go and such.
Other than that, it seems like it will be a good year--once everything gets sorted out. I'm pretty excited about my classes, even though signing up for four AP's at this school is supposed to be a death sentence of some sort. I get to take AP English Lit, AP European History, AP Calculus, AP Spanish Language, French 1, and Philosophy... I'm pretty sure every one of my teachers is a different nationality--American, British, German, Mexican, French, and I'm-not-sure-what. I gotta say, that's pretty cool. Now all I have to do is find a ballet school, and I'll be set.

finally getting to the food

I've named this blog "Chocolate and Cheese," so I suppose I better get around to the chocolate and cheese part now.

I regret to tell you that, up until today, I had yet to try real Swiss chocolate. I do not regret to tell you that it was amazing. We tried two grocery store brands, as we still haven't gotten a chance to spend a large amount of time perusing a chocolate shop (it will happen, don't worry). We chose Lindt, the Swiss brand that's in every Safeway in America, and random unknown brand, Favarger. Of course, we got two entirely different types of chocolate (dark chocolate Favarger and milk chocolate truffle Lindt), so it wasn't exactly fair to do a comparison. However, although the Lindt truffles were melt in your mouth delicious, they didn't quite have the delicate, slightly nutty quality of the Favarger. Both, though, were incredible, and I don't have to be a chocolate expert to state that these definitely weren't Hershey's.

oh, Genève!

After an extremely relaxing and lazy morning (and early afternoon), we headed into Geneva. We had to stop by the airport in order add my mom as a driver on our rental car--which took longer than anticipated, most likely due to the incompetence of an American company such as Hertz (hehe)--but then drove straight into the city.
I'd say the only disappointing thing about Geneva is the vast amount of shops, boutiques and stores--I can't possibly visit them all in only a year! Très tragique!
However, it was an incredibly spectacular day. Having been warned of the frigid Alpine temperatures in Switzerland, I had come prepared to be bundled in scarves and coats from September to May. It seems that the Swiss (or at least the Swiss weather) are taking a leaf out of California's book, and it has been in the high 80's to low 90's F since we've been here.
We only had time to walk along the water front for about half an hour before we had to head back in the direction of Versoix--but we managed to take some dazzling photos before leaving.
We then learned that all businesses in Switzerland close down at exactly six on Saturdays, and do not open again until Monday morning. Reaching the Co-op just in time to squeeze in, grab some microwaveable dinners, pay, and run out just before they locked us in, we doomed ourselves to unappetizing food and no cellphones (our next planned errand) for the rest of the weekend. Ah, well. We're new at this--can you tell?

a thank you

I just wanted to extend an extremely huge thank-you from my family and I, to everyone who helped us out with all our frantic packing, organizing, cleaning and readying of the house. Honestly, we couldn't have done it without you, and were definitely the most productive when others were helping us.
Thanks a trillion! Or, merci beaucoup!

many things that boggle me about Switzerland

1. Peanut butter is advertised as "American food," and the only kind that they sell is Barney's Best, which is like Skippy, but gross.
2. Their teabags are strange.
3. They don't have coffee, just espresso and diluted espresso.
4. Everyone's really nice.
5. They all seem to think I speak French. Even the tourists ask me for directions!
6. It is such a small country, yet still seems to have sooo much space.
7. All the stop signs say "STOP" in English.
8. All the mens' shorts are so short.
9. My new Swiss bank account doesn't automatically have ten trillion dollars in it.
10. You can't smile in official photographs...

More to come. :]

taking photos has never been this challenging

Today was an adventure.
Not strictly an exciting, courage-inducing, risky type adventure... more of a long, walking required, hilarious and slightly embarrassing adventure.

Today, we registered for residency in the canton of Vaud. For those of you reading who are ignorant to the ways of Switzerland (only kidding... that was me a few months ago), cantons are like small states--more the size of counties--and all immigrants have to register soon after arrival. So, we traipsed up six trillion flights of stairs in the unusually hot Swiss weather. Next, we struggled to communicate with the woman behind the desk, who spoke very little English, until she summoned her colleague--who spoke slightly more English. We filled out a long and tedious form that was translated rather poorly from French, and then, after handing over passports, birth and marriage certificates, were told we needed to also provide three passport size photos.

So, we began our adventure. We wandered through tiny, darling streets until we found the supermarket, and dished over 16 CHF for six photos each at the instant photo booth. The photos came out appallingly badly, but we were in a rush to get to the bank, so we headed back towards the registry anyways.

Upon arrival, we were told that we were not allowed to show teeth in our photos. Apparently, all official photos in Switzerland must be taken with a "neutral" expression (at least that explained why the photographer barked at me in French when I smiled too widely for my school photo), so we had to go back to the photo booth, pay again, and take this time, even more hideous (and hilarious) photos.
At least this time, they were accepted.

an arrival

Claire est en la Suisse.

OK, that's about all the French I know, I admit.
But, Claire is in Switzerland.

It's crazy. To be quite honest, I can't quite believe that I'm not just here on vacation or something. Everyone speaks French. My parents and I have already made fools of ourselves in a café, a co-op, and a restaurant. It seems that a complete vocabulary of "oui, non, bonjour, merci and croissant" is not quite enough to get by.

But we're here. I've got to say, the trip over was probably one of the most unpleasant travel experiences I've ever had. We thought that once we were in the airport with our baggage, all the incredible stress and anxiety of the move would miraculously melt away--but it was not to be.

Our flight out of SFO (destined for Calgary) was 35 minutes delayed... and the flight took an extra 20 minutes. This wouldn't have been a problem, but for the fact that our one hour layover in the Calgary airport was now reduced to 5 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that Canadian airports make you go through customs, get your baggage, re-check it, and go through security AGAIN, even if your not even entering the country? And they're about twelve times more stringent with security, taking away stuff that SFO had no problem with (like my dull-nosed craft scissors. Um, hello? I could stab someone in the eye with my knitting needles, which I was let on the plane with, but my round-tipped scissors were too sharp??)... We were told that they would hold our flight to Frankfurt for us, but by the time we got our boarding passes, they told us that plane had left, and we were now headed for London. That wouldn't have been a problem if Heathrow wasn't a disaster. But it was.
We spent our entire three-hour layover in Heathrow first waiting in a line for new boarding passes, and then waiting in another, even more monstrous line to get through security--for the THIRD time (because apparently we could have aquired some sort of dangerous or prohibited item during the time that we spent over the Atlantic Ocean or something).
Luckily, the flight to Geneva was uneventful (except for the rather odd man next to me who kept up a mumbled running commentary of the entire flight for two and a half hours) as well as the trip to our rental house.

Now, we can breathe a little. The area is beautiful (I'll post pictures soon). There are still lots of logisitics to get through, but at least we're here, and no longer have to deal with the ten trillion little tasks of readying the house for renters. We hope that within five weeks, we'll have a permanent place to stay, means of communication, and at least a basic understanding of French (haha. Righttt).

a hasty note

In twelve hours, we will be boarding our flight.
Is it completely ridiculous, after all the packing and stress and hassle and worry and work and effort, that I haven't quite comprehended the fact that I'm moving across the world yet? Because I haven't. I suppose, when I step off the plane in the other end, and everyone in the Geneva airport speaks French, I just might realize that this is all real.
I'm just finishing up the last of my packing... wanted to post a little something before I jet off.

No, but honestly. Is this for real happening??

a frantic beginning

In one hundred and nineteen hours, forty-one minutes and some odd seconds, I'll be on a plane to Switzerland. Given the near absurdity of moving across the world, I should probably be freaking out more than I currently am, but I'm strangely calm--of course, this could have something to do with the fact that I'm exhausted, it's 1:30 am, and I spent twelve hours today alternately running errands and packing.

My parents are slightly frantic at the moment. You know that period of time, right before you finish a huge project, when you think you'll never ever be done? Yeah, that's the space they're in right now. The house needs painting and re-carpeting and the cabinets and counter tops are getting re-done, the patio is getting bricked, the trees are getting trimmed, the light fixtures and doorknobs and other such knickknacks are getting replaced, the cars are selling, the cottage kitchen is getting remodeled... and there's still a massive amount of packing to do. Suddenly one hundred and nineteen hours seems impossibly short.