Thursday, October 2, 2008

Update!

Well, a lot has happened.


Lets see… I guess the fun began a week ago today.

So we decided a couple days before that we should have a Crepe night, where we made and ate crepes. We invited everyone and Stephen picked up most of the supplies, and we gathered that night at 7 and started making crepes. It was amazing. In all about 20 people came and we had the music on loud, and two crepe pans going, and everyone helping make different things to go on the crepes. The toppings ended up being Nutella, fried bananas, cooked apples and cinnamon, lemon, whipped cream, raspberries, blueberries, tons of strawberries, and walnuts.

I became a pro crepe flipper, so now I can share my skills when I get home. We sat around and ate and talked and cleaned up for a while, but it turned out to be a really fun bonding experience with all the ACA students.

Then nothing fun happened Thursday. We went to class and then I don’t know…. Did something.

Friday started out kinda cloudy, but after lunch it cleared up, so Leah and I decided that we might as well go into Carouge to a thrift store, so that we at least did something. (Carouge is a suburb of Geneva) So We caught the bus down, and went to Emmaus (the thrift store, it’s like goodwill, but more antique with more furniture). Emmaus is amazing, they have a ton of random stuff. And racks full of old fur coats… kina gross. But they have a whole section of books, some of which are in English, so I ended up getting two books for 1 swiss franc (less then a dollar), one is a classic by the French author Zola, and the other is history book about the 18th century. I know random, but I need something to keep me occupied on these long afternoons when we have no class, and we really don’t ever have much homework.
Then we found what I had really been wanting from there – pots. I have really wanted a plant in our room and I decided that if I got a pot then I would be more likely to get a plant. So we found two matching stripy pots and Leah and I got them. When we were ready to pay for them though, we couldn’t figure out where to go, so we went back to the cloths room, but they told us to go somewhere else… so we wandered around for a while until this man spots us and starts telling us how much that it will cost, but we were confused because he had just been sitting there and we weren’t sure if he actually worked there, but we finally found out that he did, and then everything was fine.

So we headed back up the mountain. After we got off the bus we were walking through Collonges when we found a field of flowers, so we stopped and took pictures, while Leah picked some. They were pretty.

That was fun. Then further up the hill I found a plant that I thought would be nice in my pot, so I dug it up. And then Leah found one at the campus, and she dug it up. So now we have matching plants in our room. They are cute, but not as cool as my old plants….



So, then there was Sabbath. Friday night we convinced Stephen and Marvin that we should make a nice substantial breakfast for Sabbath instead of the cereal that we get from the caf. So Sabbath morning the four of us made breakfast in the guys dorm. We had crepes, pain chocolat (like chocolate crepes), bananas, eggs (well, they had eggs) and oranges. It was the best breakfast I’ve had here. We sat around and talked, and then cleaned up, but we ended up being late to church. When we got there though, there was standing room only and there we chairs set up in the lobby as well. So we decided to go have church for ourselves, because lets face it wew don’t know what’s going on at church anyway.

We started walking away and found one of the other students sitting at a picnic table and joined her. Soon a few others joined us, and the 8 of us sat around and talked about everything. Then church got out, and we knew there was going to be potluck, but we had no idea where. So we stood there until someone walking by finally told us where to go. We ended up going to the gym. What ensued thereafter was the best and most chaotic potluck I have ever been to.

Basically there are four tables set up throughout the gym and once the pastor has prayer and says “bon apetit” everyone floods the tables. The gym is packed with people and everyone is just maneuvering their way towards whatever food they want, giving no thought whatsoever to any semblance of a line or any such organization. Once the four of us finally made it to every table, all the seating was taken, so we headed outside, where we sat on the curb and enjoyed our loot. Then it was time for dessert, and a similar scene greeted us, but with a little more intensity this time. The French are pretty serious about their desserts.

After eating we felt pretty lazy, so we decided to head into a park in Geneva and laze around and read. So we wandered around for a while, picked up some bread and cheese for later, and ended up behind the University library.


There we layed on our blanket and napped, read, ate, etc. until about 10 at night. By then it had gotten pretty cold, so we head back towards Carouge, where we stopped and got coffee, and caught the last bus back to Collonges.

That was a good, relaxing day. But we had to get up early the next day, so we were a little tired.

On Sunday, ACA took a trip to Chamonix/Mont Blanc.

Chamonix is kinda like the Whistler of Europe. Is is really cute and quant, and in the ery bottom of this really steep valley. We got there and were like, cool we get to ride this little gondola up the hill. And then we got on the gondola, and went up the hill, and then onto another gondola, and went up the mountain.

It was freezing. The coldest I have been in probably years. But the views were gorgeous.

We spent most of the day at the top, where we ate lunch and took tons of pictures. Then we headed back down into Chamonix to look around, and found a place with pretty good ice cream.

Then we all passed out on the hour trip back to school.

Lets see, Monday was boring, I uploaded pictures… http://picasaweb.google.fr/deplu11
No wait! It was Sandra’s birthday! Sandra is a French language student from Germany, and she’s incredibly nice, and we had a little party for her in the Guys dorm lounge. We had snacks and watched Madagascar. There was a large group of us and it was fun. Then once the movie ended we started dancing. And we danced for quite a while, Marvin kinda led out, and it was the funniest thing ever.

Then Tuesday we literally lounged in one spot for four hours and read and slept, between lunch and supper. Then after supper the four of us decided that we should make muffins, so we hiked down the hill to the little grocery store and then hiked back up and made one giant flat muffin (they have no muffin tins, obviously) and did homework… and ended up drawing.

Now, yesterday, classes were really amusing yesterday… no, no, they’re amusing everyday with Marvin in class. But then in the afternoon Leah and Stephen decided that we needed to play football, so they found a football and rounded up eight people, and we played American football for a while, until someone got hurt. Not me, surprisingly. Then for supper we ate in the dorm, the deans cooked for us. It was nice.

Well, that is a lot of info… I should try to get to it more often, that way it doesn’t take so long to write, and so long to read.

Oh and I tried to put pictures in, but I got confused, so just visit my Picasa Album. The link is up above.

Oh and I just now figured out to read comments... yeah.

Later!

2 comments:

Katie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Katie said...

Deanna, I miss you! I hope you're doing well!