Christmas in Switzerland

No, we didn't spend Christmas in Switzerland. We spent two beautiful weeks in California for the holidays, seeing as many of the friends and family there that we could manage to fit in! But apparently, the Swiss love Christmas. This became apparent when, two days before Halloween, I noticed the grocery store had Christmas decorations up, and heard carols while walking to ballet. And when I say that the Swiss love Christmas, I mean they really love it. If you thought Americans went overboard during the holidays, please come to Switzerland to see the real thing. Besides les Marchés de Noël that are held in just about every decent sized town starting the last weekend of November, there are special chocolates, visits from Père Noël, and so many decorations. To name a small portion, there were Christmas trees in train station, my ballet studio, my school, and about every three feet in the Geneva airport. Any tree outside that looks remotely like a pine or fir is decorated. There are lights in every single window, and little Père Noëls on ladders hanging off balconies. All the towns--even the smallest villages, like Perroy--have huge glowing Christmas decorations hanging above the main drags. Christmas is EVERYWHERE.

So, merry (super belated) Christmas :]

SNOW

I'm from California. I can probably count the amount of times I've seen snow on both hands. So, it's very, very exciting for me. I kinda turn into a six year old every time I see snow.

So, in the middle of December, after an unusually "warm" (as in, the temperature hung around 0*C for a good month and a half without snowing) autumn, I got reallllyyyy excited when it finally snowed.

So excited it's SNOWING!

Unfortunately, it didn't stick that day. But about two days later, the last day of school for the semester, we woke up, and the world was white! OK, this may not be a big deal for all y'all who grew up in snowy places, but it was like as amazing as Christmas, my birthday, and the first day of summer vacation combined for me.

CDL in the snow

Perroy in the snow

This doesn't mean I wasn't really looking forward to wonderful California weather for the holidays. I can only handle so much.

le Marché de Noël

Just for Alli, here is that barrage of (or maybe just two) posts.

In Switzerland, les Marchés de Noël are extremely popular, and are EVERYWHERE. Basically, they're Christmas markets... little farmers' market type fairs with booths of candy, ornaments, hot drinks, etc. The really big, fancy ones have le Père Noël (Father Christmas) visiting, and rides or games. Just about every town has a Marché de Noël at some point... Montreux (a town near Lausanne) hosts Switzerland's biggest and most famous Marché de Noël, and on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, after celebrating the holiday again with some American friends from my dad's work, we visited the Montreux market.
It was crazy cool. It was set up like some tiny, adorable Christmas town. Each of the booths looked like a little log cabin, and there were Christmas lights everywhere. There were ornaments, clothes, a broad range of gift items, and lots of food! ... including the best churros I've ever eaten (who woulda guessed you'd find them in Switzerland?) and hot mulled wine.
We ended the night by riding on a spectacular ferris wheel that provided us with a stunning view of Lake Geneva's shore.

Lake Geneva from the ferris wheel in Montreux

Thankful for Switzerland

Warning: here come a barrage of blog posts, as an apology for my absence. Pretend they've all been published in the last three weeks.

Kaelynn's Thanksgiving visit was a lot of fun--though I was sick for the last half, which was really disappointing. Still, we got lot's of chances to explore the lovely little Rolle and have an amazing Thanksgiving.

The weather finally cleared up during the week, so on Wednesday we spent a few hours in Rolle having a picnic on the promenade next to the lake. It was an incredible day... here's a taste (yes, pun intended):

The Promenade in Rolle

Thanksgiving consists of strictly American food, and it was a bit of a challenge finding everything, namely pumpkin pie filling and canned cranberry sauce (I know you can easily make "superior" cranberry sauce from scratch, but I'm a sucker for the canned sauce). Kaelynn brought us the pumpkin pie filling, and my mom had remembered to get cranberry sauce back when she was in the States in September, so we were all good.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving!

We're so thankful for the opportunity to move to Switzerland. It's been a crazy adventure, and not entirely easy--and we miss our wonderful friends and family!--but the experience is amazing, and we couldn't ask for more.

a foggy, foggy fall

I might have mentioned before: the weather here is completely spastic.

This weekend, out of nowhere, it was ridiculously foggy--to the point of driving down the highway and only seeing the car in front of you--for three days straight. While I have no problem with fog (apart from the copious amounts of frizz it adds to my hair), it wasn't the best timing.

See, on Friday, my cousin Kaelynn flew in from California to spend Thanksgiving with us--which I have been SO excited about for ages. Of course, when you hear about Switzerland, there's a few things that come to mind, and besides chocolate and cheese, mountains are definitely associated with Switzerland. I don't know about you, but pointing into the über dense fog and saying "And that slightly grayer area is the treeline by the lake. And then the slightly lighter area is the lake. And I promise there are huge mountains across the lake, but you just can't see them right now," doesn't sound very convincing.
There should be some pretty gargantuan Alps in this photo. Can't you see them?
You get the idea.

On Sunday, to escape the fog so that Kaelynn could actually see some of Switzerland, we drove into the German section, hoping that the further we were from Lake Geneva, the better the weather would be. While we were wrong about that--it pretty much rained the whole day--at least it wasn't as foggy, and we got some spectacular views, and meandered around the charming little Swiss town of Gstaad (try to pronounce it. I dare you).

Cute, touristy little Gstaad.

The River in Gstaad.

Enjoying café au lait in Gstaad.

I'm taking Thursday and Friday off from school because, after all, were I still in the US, I would have a holiday anyways (plus, the main reason, Kaelynn's only here for ten days, and I feel so bad being in school the whole time!). I'll update you on how our Swiss style Thanksgiving turns out!

i actually do have a social life

While school, dance and college apps have been eating my life recently, I've still managed to get out and have some fun in the last few weeks. A couple Saturdays ago, my friend Caroline (who also recently moved here from the US) and I spent the day in Geneva (in the pouring rain, might I add), acting like tourists and having a great time. We walked all over, taking those oh-so-cliché photos and walking into random shops. While we were disappointed that we couldn't take the classic in-front-of-the-Jet-d'Eau-photo because it was turned off that day, it was still a good time.

(Near the main bridge in Geneva)

(Elevator pic! Freezing after a good day)

Then, this past week, I went out with a big group of people for my friend Sabrina's birthday. We had a lot of fun because we went out earlier than most do on a Saturday night, and got an entire billiard hall (hahaa) to ourselves for like two hours. Plus they had really good pizza.

All in all, I'm just happy (and moderately surprised) that I'm managing to have a social life over here. We'll just see how long that continues as my app deadlines approach!

Also, thought I'd leave y'all with a few more pics from the last month or so...(Chilling in the Alps about a month ago)

(More Alps)

(The touristy and adorable section of Bern)

(Legit graffiti in Bern)(Bern from above)

general updates and all that jazz

OK. Major apologies. Seriously, I haven't posted in two weeks. I'm super sorry.

Anyways, lot's has been going on. I promise, I've been thinking about blog posts all the time--I just haven't had a chance to actually get on and write them down. Let's start from the beginning.

Halloween: was fun. We helped host a party for families at my dad's work. While the majority of the kids were under ten, it still was pretty fun. Not to mention free candy (just in case you guys wanted to know what to bribe me with).

Dance: is going fabulous. I love my studio here... they have SO many classes, and the teachers are really good/attentive. I had no idea what to expect when I came to Switzerland, so let's just say I'm pleasantly surprised. I have, however, discovered how difficult it is to take any class other than ballet in French. Ballet is fine because I know what all the terms mean, but once I get to a modern class, I'm completely lost. It was pretty comical. I'm attempting hip hop this week. It will be even more comical.

School: is going better than expected. I didn't bomb this "marking period" (like a half a semester... weird Swiss system), and actually did pretty well, so I'm relieved. Not that I can stop and breathe for a sec or anything, though, because they keep us loaded with so much work.

College: is stressing me out. First of all, college apps are so much work. Everyone warned me, but it never really hit me until now. Not to mention, coordinating letters of rec and transcripts across to continents is challenging. Even more difficult, though, is getting to auditions (for college dance programs) in various states across the US from Switzerland... they're all either on the same weekend, or like a month apart. It's really frustrating. We're trying to make one three-week trip in February, but it's such a hassle!

Weather: is so frustrating! It's so cold, but it won't snow. It just pours, constantly. While I love rain, it feels too cold for it to not be snowing. I'm sure once it starts snowing, I'll begin wishing it was raining again, but I can't wait for it to snow now. This is probably memories of a snow-deprived Bay Area childhood surfacing, but I can't wait to do all those cheesy snow-related things...

Good news: WE GOT OUR BOXES! This was better than Christmas, my birthday, and Halloween, all on the same day. It was amazing. Unpacking box after box of amazingly familiar, necessary (and unnecessary) stuff was super. I love having more than four outfits to wear, and having all my books with me. It finally, finally feels like we're settling (I keep saying that, don't I? Well, I was wrong before. I feel way more settled now). We've almost hit our 3 month-iversary! Crazy, huh?

I'm hoping to post again this weekend, and I'll include lot's of photos! As soon as my dad uploads all his photos, I'll have about five thousand to sift through... so expect a photo journal post soon!

Au revoir :]