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Published: October 21st 2005
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getting pears
laura and keri tried to get pears from this tree. at some point some guy walks up to us and says something in german. we expect him to be telling us to quit, as there is definitely an electric fence around this place trying to keep us out. i tell him i don't speak german, and he translates and says "oh, its a good time of the year for this, huh?" and smiles and walks off. oh, switzerland. Check this out. Laura left her photocopies of her passport and other important documents on the train to switzerland. b/c switzerland is the most amazing place on earth, the german guy from our sleeper car found them, somehow found the address to our school, and mailed laura all her stuff. i acn't believe that.
i just took my architecture midterm. it was pretty easy, which is fortunate b/c i know very little about architecture. i tried to get everybody to watch the Jesus videos in class yesterday. they were projected onto the screen, but nobody could hear them. so now everybody thinks i'm an idiot for watching old cheesy Jesus videos. sigh. also, my italian art history professor has suddenly decided he hates me, laura, and keri. i don't know why this is, but is very obvious. oh well. i don't think it will make that big of a difference.
okay a quick sum up about the last two days in switzerland. next to last day we rented bikes from our hostel and rode around town. we started out in the business district, which was a little frightening as i hadn't ridden a bike in years, i don't know
diggin through poop
the tree thing was futile, so instead laura and keri tried to pick up a few pears from between the piles of cow crap in the field. i took a different approach. one fell and hit the gravel road. i picked it up and took a bite from the side that hadn't hit the ground. it wasn't very good. any of those hand signals, i don't understand swiss traffic, things like that, but we managed to not get run over. then we went past interlaken west, one of the train stations, down the nice little path with all the sheep. we had lunch by the sheep, and they got very forward and had their whole heads out of their fences trying to get our apples, bread, and nutella. i had to shove my shoe in the face of one of them. it was cute though. i sure do like sheep. we also discovered that they could get out of their pen anytime they wanted, they just liked it in there. weirdos. then we followed that path some more till we got to one of the beautiful lakes. we saw geese there, and we expected them to be friendly like most of the other swiss animals, but oh no. we tried to feed them bread, and instead of being grateful they stuck their tongues out at us and hissed! those birds were pure evil, as laura says. we did some more riding, it was super super fun. went to their grocery store and just had fun looking at all the
not american and not italian stuff they had. they had horse steaks. they have those in italy, too, but i was still shocked to see them in switzerland. that night for dinner we had fondue and salad. yum yum. the last day was devoted to shopping. i bought almost everyone in my family a swiss beer mug/ glass for christmas. they're all different, of course. i hope they like them. i might have waited to get some other stuff in other countries, but rome has practiclaly no souvenirs, and i didn't want to take my chances on the rest of italy and europe bieng like that. i also bought a lot of chocolate. they had a hooter's in town, and they had an american menu up with american prices. we thought "oh wow! this place is sooo cheap! we'll go here for dinner!" turns out they don't relaly use that menu. they have a swiss one with much higher prices. what a disappointment. but i still got some chicken strips, and a hooters shirt that says switzerland on it. that amuses me greatly.
the next day we woke up early and got on the train to go home. that
evil geese
notice that we caught one of them hissing. was depressing. and then my ipod broke as soon as i got on the train, so i had to sit for 9 hours with nothing to do. that was also depressing. yes, the transition back to italy was rough. but i've recovered now.
a few more things about florence. our italian friend lorenzo would speak english to laura and keri, but if he was talking to just me, he would speak italian. eventually he reailzed i didn't know what he was talking about and used engilsh. he told us about the "monsters" in the arno. by monsters he meant river rats of some sort. we thought he was lying, but i saw one in the tiber yesterday. also, he was telling us how american we looked. he points to me, and says "but this one, i thought she was italian." i was very proud of myself.
okay so i couldn't finish this post yesterday and i'm working on it some more today (friday). i thought i would write about how much i miss home today, b/c days like this happen. i'm not really sad, just irritated and restless. its raining, my apartment is really gross, i'm missing a
lot of socks and can't find a store that carries any plain white cotton socks to replace the old ones, i'm getting really sick of pasta, i've had almost no alone time whatsoever this semester, and other things like that are all contributing to this over all feeling of blah. now, its not like these inconveniences have appeared out of nowhere. its always like this, but for some reason today i just feel angrier about it all. its probably the weather. no big deal, just thought i'd let you all in on some of the not so great stuff that comes along with studying abroad.
good thing--my grandma sent me a package with a lot of reeses in it. this made me very happy indeed. if any of you wish to send me any candy, or letters, or any thing else, do not hesitate to send these things in this direction:
sarah labauve
c/o rome study center
corso emanulelle vittorio II, 173
roma, italia
00186
a couple more things just so i wont' forget them. in switzerland, we met a really dumb austrailian who tried to tell us that a light on a mountain was mars and that
dan brown was a great writer. we then ditched him for an enormous st. bernard (i'm sure it weighs more than keri, probably more than laura, too) who we petted for an eternity.
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cole
non-member comment
nutella
nutella may be the greatest thing ever invented. my heart bursts w/ joy just thinking about it. i love how addicted europeans are to the stuff. its in everything. you need to stop writing about switzerland cuz im so jealous i wanna stop reading. kidding. im stoked that your trip went well. have any other big trips planned? maybe spain? i hear sevilla is nice in the winter. and the rain in spain stays mainly in the plan. or so i hear. hey what has God been teaching you through all this? i know its tough getting out of your environment to refocus on the Father, but i would be interested to see how He used this summer to prepare you for this semester. i know He used it to make the rest of us ready for stuff here on campus, but what did ltp do for italy??? facebook me -cole ps. michelle and chris sanders are dating if you hadnt heard already.