Friday, April 1, 2011

As the sun keeps shining...

Last week can be what I consider a perfect week of my life here in Switzerland, or atleast a week that truely makes it feel like home. As mentioned by almost every exchange student, time flys by after your 6 month mark, and it is sadly because this is the time when everything is good. you speak the language, have friends, a new family, understand the culture, and feel at home. (Ofcourse just when all is good, it is time to head home, but thats another story).
The past week for the first time in a while, the sun shone bright and long. A good 7 days long to be exact. The weather hit the low 70s, and although it was the first week back in school after vacation, I can honestly say it wasnt so bad. Spending lunnch time out on the lawn, getting ice cream in the breaks, windows left open in class hours, and overall just soaking up as much sun as possible, the atmosphere in school was that of a welcomed spring =)

Then the weekend hit, and started off by me heading over to a friends house with 3 other girls from my class, and hanging out baking cookies, and overall just talking. It felt so much like what I used to do back in the USA with my friends on the weekend and made me realize how good of friends I am becoming with them =) At about midnight everyone else headed off, and I stayed for a sleep over with the girl whose house it was. She was in America last year on exchange in south carolina and its really funny hearing how different just my life, and that in the south can be. After watching a movie and staying up talking we finally headed to bed about 3. The next day we were up nice and early at a sharp 8am. After showering and an unbelievably fast breakfast we headed to basel and met up with two girls form the night before for a Farmers Market. We ended up spending almost the entire day there simply looking around, buying what caught our eye, and then doing a little touring...oh and ofcourse eating. I found a really cool bracelet and earings, as well as...well I will post it later as its a gift for a friend back home... We also bought an amazing old fashioned poleroid camera, some cool sunglasses, and other random things. I swear they had everything there! Then that night I went to a birthday party from a friend I met through AFS at a really cool camping area place (which also took about 20 minutes of walking randomly around to find) where they had set up a fire and such. Unfortunatly it was raining and as I didnt know that many people we didnt stay that long.

The next day I headed down to Cully with my host family, which is in the french speaking part of switzerland. It is a small whine town set on the Genf Sea, near Lausanne, and is absolutely amazing. So beautiful! All the houses were what you picture in France or Italy! It was really cool getting to hear my host family speak french as other then one of my host sisters I never really had before (also good as my french is limited to yes, no, and my name is) After the long train ride we walked through the whine fields for about half an hour before getting to our restauraunt that looked over the sea and fields. It was stunning. After lunch we headed back to the main town to see the Cully World Jazz Festival. We saw an amazing band called Portico Quartet from England. It was really cool, but as I was so tiered from the past few days and school, I was  ready to head home when it ended.

Today the is perfect, with temperatures in the mid 60s, and sunny skys. This weekend is even going to be about 77!! I also just learned my parents are going to be coming to visit around the end of may and I am so excited! It will be great to be able to show them my life here!!

For pictures from my weekend and past few months, please see the side bar! =))
Tschüss!!
 Sarah

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