Switzerland

Thursday:

We woke up early and got ready as fast as possible because at 7:30, our taxi arrived. The taxi was an 8-seater, which was pretty impressive. We said our goodbyes to Steve, Laura, Seren, and Ayden, and were off to the airport. Uneventful ride, but when I was getting out, I slammed my ear on a plastic part of the seat in front of me, which really hurt.

There was a really sweet deal at the Boots in the airport (Boots is like a convenience store) for getting a sandwich, drink, and snack, so we got stuff there for lunch.

Flight was short, in terms of flights. Maybe around 2 hours?  Sat next to Alex. Funny, that. In the car, I'm almost always next to Bella, but for this trip, on the planes, I've always sat next to Alex.

At the airport, after we got out luggage, we found a spot to sit in. We had arrived around 1:30 local time.  My dad out on a bus to Freiburg to get the rental car. This was a 3-country airport, so even though it was technically in France, it was for Germany, France, and Switzerland. Because we can only get insurance on a car for 2 weeks, and it's waaaay cheaper to get the car in the same country you want to drop it off, we were doing things this way.

I ate my wrap (because when it's wrap vs sandwich, wrap is often the more awesome choice), talked to a German girl with a dog waiting for her parents to arrive, played some cards with Alex and Bella, blogged (I think?), listened to music, and was really bored for several hours. It's a bit of a blur. I was tired. Partly, because I didn't get as much sleep as usual, but I think also because it was so utterly boring. Small airports are not exciting. Also, I had no wifi, so the only thing I could do with my phone was write in memos, take pictures, calculate currency, and look at the different world clocks.

We finally decided to head outside to wait. Alex ran around pushing us on the luggage carts for just a few minutes before my dad pulled up with the car. It was about 5:30. Hooray!

We packed up the car quickly, turned on French radio, and we were off! We had less than an hour of travel in France, and then we moved into Switzerland. It was a fast and easy process. Our car had a sticker so it could be driven into Switzerland without a fee, so we pretty much just drove into Switzerland, just like driving into Georgia from Florida.

Except, then we got Swiss radio. Didn't have French radio long enough to truly judge it, but Swiss radio is not bad! For their popular music radio, they do a mix of popular songs in English and in Swiss, and it wasn't annoying, like some of our radio stations at home are. So Switzerland, I approve of your radio. Good job.

Also, Switzerland is absolutely gorgeous. Like, everywhere. Every next country we've arrived in has been prettier and prettier, but I don't think Germany is gonna beat this. It's pretty magnificent here.

We arrived that evening in Langenthal at Elisabeth's house. Eli and Neal weren't actually there, so we were welcomed by Brigitta and Dominique.

A little backstory: I met Eli when she spent a year at GHS and was in our band. We got to know each other during indoor. She and Neal started dating at the end of that year, and now, 2 years later, they're still making it work. Since Neal lives in Florida still, he's currently spending 6 weeks of his summer here in Switzerland, and we just happened to align our visit to during the time he's here. Also, Eli has a big family.

We had curry for dinner (yum), and went to bed. The day was finally over.

Friday:

When we woke up, Eli and Neal had arrived. Yay! We all kinda went down for breakfast together and tried to figure out the day.

First of all, we played a lot of uno. I know I get tired of things easily, but I am tired of uno now. So many card games. I guess I'm just really not very into card games or board games unless they're truly creative. I enjoy Cranium games and The Game of Things, but other than that, I can get burned out pretty easily in terms of card/board games.

We decided to go to the library and the grocery store, but not everyone can fit in the car, so Eli, Neal, Alex, and I were to ride bikes. And here's where I felt like a total American imbecile.

I promise, I *can* ride a bicycle. I've done it for years. But... first of all, I was falling off the bikes. Literally. I don't usually think of myself as short, but the seats were way too high for me, and I could not reach the pedals. When I was able to get on. Before I started falling off, I couldn't actually get on. The third bike was the closest, so we lowered the seat some and I could actually reach the pedals. Yay me.

The other thing was gears. I've lived in generally flat places, and while most people have gears, I just never really got a bike with gears. Plus, in the US, it's mostly a car society, so after my bike was stolen in Arizona, it wasn't really a big priority to get a new one. Now back in Florida, my grandmother has loaned me her bike, but once again, I don't really have the opportunity to ride it that much. And it doesn't have gears. So basically, I have no experience with gears. And here I am, in mountainous Switzerland, riding a bike with gears that I don't understand. Embarrassment of the century, it feels like.

I didn't die, obviously, but I did feel pretty... [insert your own choice of word here]. The other 3 tried to help me, but who knows. I did stuff with the gears. I didn't fall off while riding. I didn't get hit by a car.

They had a nice little library. Brigitta gave us a tour of it. Their system of organization is slightly different. It's interesting. I won't bore you with the details of library organization. Their was also a music school on the upper floor, so that was cool.

The grocery store had a lot of samples, but other than that, not much to note about it. We did find blue Fanta, however. It was too strange to pass up. Turns out only the bottle was blue. But the flavor was Elderflower syrup/juice (something we do not drink in the States), but also lemony and then carbonated like any soda. It was really good. I could probably drink a lot of that stuff.

After shopping, we went back home. My dad made potato pancakes and chicken for dinner.    

Saturday:

Bern day. Bern is the capital of Switzerland. If you didn't already know. I didn't know this before we started planning this trip.

Since not everyone can fit in the car, everyone besides the 5 of us took the train. Of course, they got there before us. Darn traffic.

Once we got into the city, we found everyone else pretty easily. Some of the adults went to park the car, and Eli started showing us the city.

Eli bought us some really good pretzels down in the subway before we rejoined as a group. Together, we walked through a farmer's market, passed by a big game of chess, and looked at the Federal whatever building.

Fun fact about the Swiss: they don't know who their president is. In a good way. There's 7 elected officials from different areas and demographics who switch around being the president. They're politicians. Not celebrities. When you think about it, why the hell do we treat our politicians in the US like celebrities?! It's totally unnecessary. And it makes no sense. They have a job to do, and they should do it. Who cares what a president or former president is doing in the bedroom. Who cares what they eat for breakfast. What does it matter what they're wearing on a day when nothing is happening. Sometimes the way we have our world is one of the most detrimental options we could choose. Yeah, we should care about politics. But you and I both know that US Politics is not just about politics.

Anyways, we passed by a clock tower and many interesting fountains and buildings while walking through the streets. We walked all the way to the bear park. Yes, Bern means bear, and Bern has bears.

We decided to stop in the restaurant above the bear area, where we had some french fries. We haven't eaten out much this trip, but we have had a fair amount of french fries. Which, in nearly every language, seems to just mean fried potatoes. Or chips, if you're using British English. Why do we call them *french* fries, again?

After, we tried some ice cream that's of the best Swiss brand of ice cream. I don't remember what the brand was, but I got lemon/lime ice cream, and it was pretty good.

Once we finished our ice cream, we climbed up a hill (mountain) to get to the rose garden. At this point, Eli and Neil left to see a Military Tattoo concert, and Anne joined us.

Anne is part of Switzerland's rhythmic gymnastics team. At 16, she's the youngest in the Senior Team. She's been living away from home for years now, and trains daily. During the weekends, she comes home to be able to spend time with her family.

We were pretty tired at this point, so we decided to head back home at this point. At home, we had more of the family arriving home, and this is when we met Beatrice. Out of all the family, Bea was the quietest. Though our only being able to speak English didn't really help. We met Eli's dad this evening also.

That night for dinner we had artichokes that we had bought from the market in Bern. For the 3 of us, this was the first time we'd ever had artichoke. We'd had artichoke dip and artichoke on fancy pizzas and whatever, but we'd never eaten from the whole artichoke. So, that was an interesting experience. It's a good bit of work, and it has a strange taste, but it was fun to try, and tasted good with the sauce.   

Sunday:

Moving day. We weren't completely down with the Tardent family, but we were off to Lenk for a few days.

It was a basic travel day. We drove from Langenthal to Lenk, passing through many small Swiss towns. We even passed a *merange factory, a dessert food that seems very popular in Europe all over, and is virtually unknown in the US. Which is ok with me, because I don't particularly like them anyways.

We got to Lenk, and then drove up the mountain to Chalet Coco and our friends. Here again it is very noticeable how everyone is naming their houses/chalets. The only name our house has is the one my aunt gave it on Facebook to check in. It's practically an Easter egg. I'm not gonna give up the name, but next time you're at my house, check in. Hopefully you'll laugh.

We arrived at the house and met Karin, Stefan, and the kids Linda and Robin.

Our trip to Europe had been getting more and more beautiful, but here, in the area around and in Lenk, here it peaked. It was so absolutely beautiful here.

They also had a dog, Polo, so several of us went on a walk so Polo could use up some energy (of which he had an endless supply of).

After we got back from the walk, we hit the hot tub. Hot tub with a view, for sure.

The World Cup Final started soon after, with dinner happening in the middle of it. We were very glad to have Germany win, especially because that was our next country.

Lest you think everything works great on this trip.. there were 3 rooms for the 5 of us to sleep in. It was decided that Bella and I would take one, and Alex would get a room to himself. After arguing about it, of course. Then Bella and Alex argued about the room choices. And then Bella and I argued about the blinds. (The sun is up for an absurdly long time in Europe in the summer, therefore the blinds are there for a reason and therefore you should actually use them so you can sleep. You don't need to see the view when you sleep. You can open up the blinds and look at the view once you wake up.) I didn't really care about which room. I was just happy to have a bed that I wasn't taking away from anyone else. And a shower without the fear of using all the hot water. And a dryer. That's all I need. Everything else was icing on the cake. But my blinds argument was the more reasonable choice.
                                               
Monday:

It was decided that we would go to a waterfall this day. And so we did.

Here again, incredible Switzerland. It was a waterfall that you could look at but you could not believe you were actually at. It was really impressive. Most of the kids chose to walk down the path close to the waterfall (and in it's spray), while Bella and the adults walked down a little farther away from the waterfall. I love my raincoat. The path was super muddy and the spray drenched my jeans/shoes/socks, but it was worthy it.

Next stop, restaurant. We got french fries. The french fries came with some roast beef, which I thought was an interesting mix, but okay. The moms got these big ice cream/merange/whipped cream things. Kids played on the playground. Then, Stefan took our family minus Alex and we walked up a riverside path to another waterfall. Because of a lot of recent rain, the spray on this one was pretty intense too. On the path, this one was unavoidable for anybody. But, I walked to the side of my dad and was blocked from the majority of the spray.

Went shopping before heading home for dinner. We were thinking about making them burrito bar for dinner one evening (rice, black beans, tortillas, salsa, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, & tomatoes is pretty much everything necessary. It's a staple dinner in our house.). We could not find black beans. And tortillas were way over-priced. And the rice was almost all boxed & parboiled. What the heck!                                                                
Hot tub happened nearly every day, so you can basically take it for granted that almost every evening, somebody was in the hot tub.

For dinner we got something totally new, and usually not served in the summer- we had cheese fondue! Legit Swiss cheese fondue. I was duly impressed. I know, I know. It's not that strange a food. But c'mon. I live in FLORIDA. This is a winter food for SWITZERLAND. Where there are glaciers and snow that you can see in the Alps even at this very moment. No kidding, you can see far off snow from the porch. I'd only ever done chocolate fondue previously, and that had been only at the Coca-Cola Factory in Atlanta (Thank you Agnes Scott College) and Golden Corral. First place/event was pretty epic, second is a pretty lame. 

Anyhow, we had our cheese fondue for dinner. The kids had the "mild cheese pot" but it was still a stronger cheese than we'd us in the US. Not bad. Just not what we're used to. We don't have it.

So, we dipped bread, little pickles, pineapple.. it was fun! I'm glad we had the opportunity to do it.

Tuesday:

Off to see something new! Yesterday the waterfalls, today the lakes. Or rather, lake.

We drove to Lake Lauenensee (though,  the -see means lake, so I guess that's technically repetitive. Oh well). And we passed some waterfalls on the way! Needless to say, it was a beautiful drive.

On the way, we picked up some friends/neighbors of the family who live next door to their town house (remember, we're staying in a summer house) and added them to the caravan. At one point, we went around a round-a-bout several times to get our cars in the correct order with the right car leading.

Once you got there, there was a parking lot, a small building with bathrooms, and a path along the river to the lake. Before the two moms and I had even finished using the bathroom (and we were not taking that long!), the soccer/futbol was lost in the river. Whoops. That ball's gone forever. If only they had held the ball for 5 minutes more til they were past the river.. but oh well.

After the short walk through the forest and along the river, you arrived at Lauenensee. And my gosh. You really need to do the whole walk around the lake to get a proper look at it's beauty. The lake is huge, and surrounded by forests, mountains, and waterfalls.

Halfway around the lake we stopped for a snack. We are in Switzerland after all, so our snack most definitely included chocolate. Duh.

Polo spent some time in lake and at every point possible, brought along a stick for someone to throw. Well, "stick." It became a small log on the second half of the walk. Not only was it somewhere around 5 inches in diameter, but it was about a yard/meter long. He was running back and forth between everyone and we would have to yell out "watch out!" in order to prevent anyone from getting knocked out from the back of the knees. We even had strangers dodging his log. It was pretty hilarious.

We were almost at the end when we came across some camping/picnicking area. Other kids were swimming, so Robin and Alex decided they would too. And then Linda also. The rest of us stayed dry, and the three of them experienced the freezing Alpine waters. Good for them. I don't regret skipping that.

On the way home, we stopped by some small town for us to do some grocery shopping and the others to get some coffees/snacks.

We went in 3 stores looking for rice, beans, and tortillas. Never found black beans, but Denner has cheap Extra Large tortillas. I'm not sure why, but we were able to find that. And they should've been labeled as "humongous" instead, because I think those are the some of the biggest tortillas...I'd have to hold them up to Chipotle tortillas for scale, because I really don't know. But, they only had extra large, and that would work, so we were good.

Because we are such fondue novices, we were to have another fondue for dinner. We'd experienced cheese, now was meat. And maybe I'm not very cultured, but I'd never even heard of meat fondue before. And when it was explained to me, I was a bit skeptical.

Here's what happens. They slice some raw meat very thin, you take your skewer (btw, cheese and meat fondue skewers are different), roll up the meat a little to get it on your skewer, and sit it in the pot for a few minutes. In the pot, it's either oil or broth. We used broth.

It was really good! After you do it a few times, you stop worrying if your meat was cooked enough, because yes, it is cooked enough. We had both beef and chicken, and lots of condiments to put on them. There was a curry mango sauce that I liked. It was kinda cute, because all these sauces were in bottles that looked like the Heinz ketchup bottles, but mini ones.

Cheese fondue: check   
Meat fondue: check
Verdict: both were fun, but taste-wise, I preferred meat.

Wednesday:

Chill day. We laid around for a good bit of time. It was actually pretty hot.
                                     
The moms left to visit some herb place, and we went to the pool.

First weird thing = the changing room. There was an area to put all the shoes, then lockers and a bunch of stalls to change in. Normal, except the genders weren't seperate. That didn't bother me, but it was definitely something that wouldn't happen in the US.

After the locker room with the changing stalls, it separated the genders for bathrooms/showers. Normal stuff like that.

Pools are more than just their bathrooms....

There was an inside pool, a seperate waterslide, a heated outside pool, and a unheated outside pool. As a Floridian and Costa Rican (and partial Phoenician), I have done pools. And waterparks. And springs. And rivers. And Oceans. So, it is quite possible that I'm a bit jaded about pools (and it didn't help that I had nobody my age to hang out with), but Alex and Bella enjoyed the pool more than I did. Not that it was bad. It was a pretty nice set-up there. But I think I prefer Swiss nature to Swiss pools.

Also, I tried their waterslide. Twice, actually. It was way too slow. It was interesting because they had red/green lights to tell you when to go,   rather than a lifeguard. But again, too slow. At the end I hit my head trying to get out of it.

The second time, I don't know what happened, but the people behind me started gaining on me (I'm not sure of the timing of this slide because of the light system) and I really paddling and then running to get out of the slide and splash area so I wouldn't get slammed by the mom and her kid joyfully barreling down the slide. It confounds me as to how they were able to go down so fast.              
                                                 
In Europe, they take their badminton much more seriously than Americans do. Also, I'm seriously bad at it. Heinz and Olivia were total pros at it. I, on the other hand, would try to serve the ball so that I could hit it, and would miss five times in a row. Serving to myself. No exaggeration. But Robin wasn't much better, so that was good. Except,  well, we can probably blame his time in the US for that.

We had some ridiculously laughable games, first between Robin and Alex, then Robin and I. Robin could only manage to spike the ball over the net straight to the ground, and I could only hit it extremely towards the left, so needless to say, Robin beat us in both games. He also kept track of the score, and our points were ALL laughable, so you can't even compare it to a real badminton game.

We finally made our burrito bar meal for dinner that night. We made homemade salsa, which I will definitely be doing a lot of in this next year, because it's great. It's simple, but it's the best. Some people say they can eat a whole carton of ice cream or a whole jar of Nutella or peanut butter... I could not do that. However, I could eat a whole bowl of salsa. With or without chips. If you know me, you'll recognize that I dislike peppers. Can't really explain it. I've just never liked them, long as I can remember. BUT. When it comes to salsa, you gotta have peppers, and I will always eat the peppers in salsa, even when they're noticeable, like in fresh homemade salsa.

I did not eat the whole bowl of salsa, however tempted I might have been, but I did eat a lot of food that night. We worked with what we could find in Switzerland, like using red kidney  beans and some other kind mixed together instead of black, and I think it turned out well. Everyone seemed to like it.

Heinz and Olivia left that night for home, so we said our goodbyes after dinner.

Thursday:

Not sure what to say about this day. Not much happened. It was similar to Wednesday morning, but without the pool in the afternoon. People went on several walks. We hung around the house. But I, I had a mission.

See, I'm not good with doing some things daily. Like blogging. I couldn't post daily. I take certain blocks of time like when we're in the car or sometimes before bed or during chill days, and I write a lot then.

I wrote about 7 days in the 1 day. This may not seem like a lot, but I like to write random interesting (hopefully) tangents, and we are doing a lot, so it took some time. So, that's what I did. I wrote. I listened to music. I looked at the view.

The guys went into town and bought a new grill and soccer/futbol. They played a game of dads vs sons. Sons won. They assembled the grill when they got back. We had some of the more traditional sausages for dinner.

Friday:

I woke up earlier than normal. Bad stuff. My stomach felt terrible. I threw up. No more details necessary. 
                                                   
My mom wasn't feeling great either, but we had planned to visit the Rhone Glacier on this day, so we were gonna do it.

I've never ever had car/motion/travel sickness before, but the curvy mountainous roads were not fun on this day. The 2 hours there was the worst. Even with the help of ginger tea and two pieces of candied ginger. Which, by the way, was the only thing I'd eaten that day. Whenever I feel bad/anxious/sick, I lose my appetite. Many a time I  have had to force myself to eat breakfast (ie days with big performances, first days of school, big tests, auditions!!). I did not eat breakfast this day. I think I would have thrown up again if I had tried to eat anything. But the ginger was like a miracle. Great for helping me feel better. Really spicy, but it works.

We got to the glacier. I ate what would be considered as two normal bites of bread, but for me was about 15 bites of bread.

We walked through the shop to pay for the glacier and started our walk down to the glacier. That was depressing. The glacier used to reach the hotel. Now, you had to go past the hotel and shop and then walk down into what was practically a valley now. Compared to the mountains around it, the glacier isn't a mountain anymore. Thankfully there's still a good bit of ice, but the waterfall past the lake at the bottom of the glacier was rushing waaaay too fast for comfort. You just think, if the melted ice is escaping that fast without looking like it is emptying the lake, that cannot be good for the glacier.

It was pretty cold. Not that I had much extra energy to keep myself warm, but it was cold anyways. I had my light jacket and rain jacket over a short sleeve shirt and jeans. I kept the hoods up for the majority of the time.

Once you got down to the glacier, you walked past the lake and then along some taller ice until the path was right up to the ice and you were walking on snow. Wow, look! We actually walked on snow in the summer in Europe! The European summer has been a lot warmer than expected, so it was funny to actually get to walk on some snow. Slush. Ice. It was a mix of all that plus dirt.

Every year they carve out a tunnel and ice grotto for visitors. And they cover the top of that area of the glacier with blanket/tarps but it still melts a lot. A lot a lot. We walked into the tunnel and it was dripping all over the place for the first several yards/meters. After that you started getting further into the ice and it wasn't dripping so much.

It was incredible. The path was wooden boards atop the ice. Along the way near the floor there were holes cut out for long pole lights. The ice was blue and really clear. You could see so many bubbles for several inches at least. You couldn't really tell how far you were seeing since it was just eons of blue. It's not like the rest of the glacier was lit up.

The grotto was small, but considering they had to carve it this year, it was pretty big. It's good that money is going into this melting glacier, but it's still worrying.

After the tunnel and grotto, we walked out of the glacier. We realized that last year's grotto was still open, but you had to climb up the blanket-covered ice to get to it. At one point, a ladder was used as a handrail so you wouldn't fall down the ice.

In the older tunnel, it was interesting to compare because it was much more melted. It was also shorter, but the grotto seemed bigger. You don't know how big it was originally, though. The grotto was blocked off because the melting, so you could only walk the tunnel and then look out at it.

We walked out of the older ice tunnel and then back up to the shop and parking lot. I was so done with standing and walking at that point. I still didn't feel great, but the ride back was much easier. I'd meant to use those 4 hours for blogging, but I did absolutely nothing. We did stop by a little rest-stop restaurant on the way home. We got a thing of fries, of which I ate less than a dozen. I also ate about 4 normal sized bites worth of bread. So, almost half a piece of bread total. Minus the crust.

When we got home we had a light dinner of yogurt with granola (muesli) and fruit in it plus bread. I had 2 pieces of bread (minus the crust, because I just couldn't deal with the hard crust that day) and a bowl of the yogurt. Yay! Eating food! That was all I ate that day. Oh well. I had my one sick day. Every big trip has one. Glad to be done with the day.

Saturday:

My stomach hurt all day and I hadn't regained my appetite 100%, but it was a better day. I asked for a one egg omelet, and the egg had two yokes. I guess the chicken wanted me to eat more. And I almost finished it along with 2 pieces of bread!

We packed up our stuff into the car. I walked into a window trying to look outside. Whoops. Haha.

On the ride back, we went by an Alpine salt factory. They dry herbs and mix it into the salt. There were also samples of things. Like, syrups. I tried Bee Flower syrup and Alpine herbs syrup in water. They also had hot water and a bouillon-type mix, so we had several cups of "soup." It was good. But we didn't buy it. Alex and Bella would have used it up too quickly.

We eventually got back to Langenthal and back to the Tardents. We played more cards. They had taught us a game called Legretto, and so we bought our own set of the decks to take home. We showed them our copy, and ended up using our game rather than theirs.

After dinner we went outside into the front yard. The kids used the small trampoline to do interesting jumps for the camera. Anne showed us some of the amazing gymnast things she can do. Then all kinds of balls came out. There was futbol, a rugby ball, and a generic ball bouncing around. Then we played table tennis in the backyard. We definitely took advantage of the later summer sunset that evening. 

Sunday:

My dad's birthday! He turned 42. If you went to his blog, you can see the humorous post he wrote about that.
                               
Mattu also came him. First time we met him. Nice guy. Didn't get to talk to him a lot, but he does drumline (the Swiss version, because marching band is pretty unique to the US), so that was a funny coincidence. I absolutely cannot get away from drummers. They pop up everywhere in my life! But it's all good, cuz percussion is the second best instrument/section (trumpets represent!). 

Eli's mom was editing an English translation of a manual for this fancy birth center place, so we helped out. It was really entertaining. It was all translated from German, so sometimes it was just normal writing, and sometimes it was SOOO obvious it was a translation because it was super awkward or phrased in a way that an natural English speaker would never use or occasionally way totally the wrong word for the situation. Like, they wrote "regression" instead of "recovery" because there wasn't a complete English translation for the word in German. But it has the total opposite meaning than what they wanted, so we did some word changing. My gosh, if pregnant moms were reading the original translation, they would have been really worried about this center at some places in the packet. It was great fun.

Eli and Neil were making dinner that night, so a group of us went for a walk around the town.

We walked through a cemetery, which was really neat, because everyone does a lot more with the ground around their plot. I decided that the person who buries me should try to bury me vertically (like standing up) so that it would take up less space. Not that they were doing that in this cemetery. I just thought it'd be cool.   

Something they actually did in this cemetery, however, was give people the option to be buried anonymously. You had to be cremated, though, so I wasn't into that. But I really liked the idea of being buried anonymously without a gravestone but in a small garden-y type area with other people who chose the same. I really hope they start providing great environmentally friendly biodegradable options for burial on the general market because that's most definitely what I want for my burial. Not that im planning on dying soon. But I don’t want my body to lay in a big coffin in the ground releasing toxins into the soil. What happened to the whole dust to dust thing? I want to be like an earth worm. In the end, I want my body to contribute in a good way to our dirt, not help contaminate it. EVERYONE should watch "Dirt! The movie" because it's a great documentary and super informative but also interesting. Also, I watched a TED talk about a possible mushroom suit for your dead body that would eat all the bad toxins in your body and turn them into better stuff, so keep an eye on that, because I totally want that if that becomes a real possibility. Also, I'm thinking about punk rock and Latin music for my funeral. Thoughts? Anyways, we can plan my post-death details later. Just wanted to put some stuff in writing in preparation.

The river flows under the city under buildings. So, there's high sidewalks in case the river gets really full. Then they flood the streets and put bridges over the crosswalks. Pretty neat.

That night, we had a Swiss mac'n'cheese dish that had potatoes in it, and with homemade applesauce. It was really good.           

After dinner, we played Werewolf, which is similar to the game Mafia, but slightly more complicated, and you get cards to remember your characters instead of just remembering. There's more characters, too. Eli narrated our story. We played twice, and both times I was one of the werewolves! I was kinda funny! My other werewolves got found out fairly quickly and I kept on getting accused, so I kept having to come up with reasons why I wasn't the werewolf. I did pretty well, because despite being accused nearly every round, I won the first game. Didn't win the second game, but that's okay. I was the last werewolf standing in that game too.

I've been talking about a lot of different games, but I'm not going to explain how to play any of them, because that's waaay too complicated to do. Look them up if you want. I'll see if I can add links to explanations of these games once I get back to my computer in August. For now, that's Switzerland.