OOps.

Ok, ok.  I really suck at this blog thing.  I swear I am going to try to get better.  Hmm where did we leave off.. Ok, so I got back from Berlin, and it turns out, after that week, I happened to have 2 weeks of vacation time.  Seriously, France knows what's up.  A normal person would probably be tuckered out after (barely) sleeping in a bus for 12 hours, but as the french say "il faut profiter!"  So, I slept most of the day on Saturday, and on Sunday morning I got up and drove up to Cologne, Germany with some of my Frenchy friends.   So just the same as we celebrate Mardi Gras in the states in New Orleans, there are a bunch of cities here in Europe that celebrate Carnival.  Cologne is one of the biggest celebrations that there is.  Clearly, the goal of this trip wasn't exactly for sightseeing, it was more to go and have fun for a couple of days.  

The first day we wandered around the city, saw some parades, drank some brews, etc.  Later that day, our 2 american friends, Kara and Debbie met up with us.  We went out that night, which happened to be a Sunday, and you would have thought that it was a Saturday night.  This town was like one big party.  All I know is that we spent way too much time at a club called "Diamonds" towards the end of the night/early morning.  I think we'll leave it at that.  Monday is the day of the big parade.  We got up, put on some "costumes," which were basically just a random assortment of accessories, and headed to the parade.  Lucky for us, my friend Debbie has some German friends, so we actually spent some time watching the parade from a balcony which was cool.  After seeing Mardi Gras in New Orleans last year, this was a pretty calm celebration.  There were a lot of people but nothing ever got out of hand and the crowds were bearable.  Leave it to Germany to have an orderly drinking fest.  Point for the Germans.  

The only thing I really could have gone without during this festival was definitely the traditional music.  German people are crazy.  I love them, but they're crazy.  This song happened to be the theme of the trip, it's called "Viva Colonia."   I still can't get that song out of my head.  I put the link there so I can spread the torture to others, I wouldn't recommend actually listening.  I don't know why but sometimes I just really can't take the language seriously when there are people constantly yelling "WUNDERBAR!" which actually sounds like VUNDERBAR! (it means wonderful, in case you didn't know.)  

Also one of my favorite things about this little trip is the fact that I got to eat German cuisine for 4 days.  A diet of schnitzel and french fries is definitely my cup of tea.  That's fat free, right? I really enjoy the fact that in Germany it is perfectly acceptable to use mayonnaise as a dipping sauce.  I no longer put mayo on my sandwiches because it is so bad for you, yet I think it's ok to use it as a dipping sauce for my french fries.  Healthy, I know.  

Well that's all for now.. next it was onto Brussels, Amsterdam and Heidelberg.  To be continued..

Where do I begin..

Well I have pretty much been on vacation for 3 weeks, so I guess I will start at the beginning.  A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from the school, explaining that one of the teachers took a leave of absence, and the school was desperately searching for someone to chaperone a school trip to Berlin.  Umm a free trip to Berlin and no work for a week?  Sure.  So me and 3 other teachers took a group of 44 seniors to Berlin for about 5 days.  Oh yeah, and we took a bus.  If you look at a map, Berlin isn't exactly right around the corner, it is about 12-ish hours away from here!  It was a long night sleeping in a bus, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.  When we were there we saw Checkpoint Charlie, lots of Holocaust memorials and the museum, the Sans Souci palace in Potsdam, and umm I forget what else?  All I know is it ended up being really fun!  Of course the students wanted to go out, and since they are French, the other teachers didn't seem concerned that they wanted to go out drinking.  We compromised and took them bowling for 2 nights, and then let them go out on the town one night.  The result only ended with ONE barfing girl!  Good job kids, way to hold your alcohol.  No but the trip was really fun, and I got to know a lot of the students a lot better.  They were so cute, they always included me in everything that they did during the trip.  I am so lucky to have such nice students :) 

Checkpoint Charlie

I think this was a church
The entrance to Babylon that they moved to a museum... sorry its facing the wrong way
This was built some year in the BC's...
The whole gang!

Yet Another Skiing Adventure!

Since I don't work on Wednesdays (yes I know, rough life) and my host dad (from when I first moved here) is retired, we decided to go skiing for the day.  There are a ton of skiing areas near my school, so we went to one called Schnepfenried.  I know what you're thinking, the name sounds very French.  So anyways, my friend Kara came along and we went for the day.  The ski resort is really small, so they were nice enough to only have the butt-pull lifts instead of the chairs.  I am seriously a PRO now.  It was smooth sailing..... at first.  This time about halfway through the day, I got a little bit too comfortable.  Never a good thing.  I was going up, not paying any attention, and all of a sudden fell off the butt pull.  My friend Kara was behind me, and since she was not paying any attention, she fell off of hers, on top of me.  It was a tangled mess of skis and poles, and instead of trying to move like a normal person would do, I just sat there laughing for 5 minutes.  Once again, French people think Americans are crazy.  The skiing was pretty decent though, and it only cost 12 euro for a whole day of skiing!  Not bad at all.  

the infamous butt pulls..

Kara and Gérard in the background

Making people jealous of my ski skills

The Munster Valley

Zurich

Old Town Zurich

Munster Church

naked man and an eagle.. standard 

Apparently the Swiss think that the non-Swiss peeps are ruining their country..

Me and Kenny on the way to the mountains 

Chur old town

The bathrooms at the "box" bar in Chur

meg!

Cheese fondu

Me &Brian at Lenzerheide

Last weekend I went to Zurich, Switzerland to visit a few people that I went to high school with.  I have been wanting to go skiing in the alps, so it worked out perfect that I happen to know 2 people living right near there, and who love to ski.  On Thursday after school I headed out fully equipped with my super american backpacking pack.  It only takes 2 hours to get from here to Zurich, which was perfect timing to watch the 2 new episodes of Lost that came out the night before :)  Our train had a stop in Basel, so while crowds of people were coming onto the train.. someone came and sat down right next to me, practically sitting on me, and threw my stuff onto my lap.  I of course was very annoyed and was trying to enjoy my t.v. show addiction.  Well I looked over to give them a nasty look, and it was my friend Kenny, who was one of the people I was going to visit!  He works in Basel, and on his way home he somehow found me on the train.  So we headed to Zurich, and went and met up with Megan and her boyfriend, the other people I was visiting.  The first night we just did some catching up ( I probably haven't seen these people in about 4 years.)  

On Friday all of them had to work, so I went out and did some exploring in Zurich on my own.  For some reason, every time I have been to Switzerland, it has been pouring rain.  Well of course the curse continued on this day too.  I saw the Swiss Museum, the lake, some churches, and since it was raining, I had a perfect excuse to do some shopping too.  Zurich is a really beautiful city, and everywhere in Switzerland is always so clean and nice!  It also seems very americanized there, for the first time in months I saw a ton of SUV's driving around, which is very un-euro of them.  But I guess the Swiss don't want to be "euro" anyways.  

On Saturday we went to an american-style breakfast place, and I got some greasy eggs and bacon for the first time in euroland!  People here do NOT eat that for breakfast.  I am sure it is only americans that go to this place.  I also was told that Zurich has a Hooter's, which I was very jealous of.  Not for the sake of seeing women wearing skanky clothes, just for the sake of missing greasy American food.  After hearing about the big wind storm in the mountains on saturday, and figuring out that all of the ski lifts were closed at the ski resorts, we had to postpone our skiing for Sunday.  We decided to go up to the mountains anyways so we could get an early start on Sunday.  The town where we got a hotel was called Lenzerheide.  On the train there we had to switch to a bus in a town called Chur, so we walked around the old town there for while too and had some beverages.   In Lenzerheide we went out, had some delicious cheese fondu, and got to bed early.  

Sunday morning we got up and headed for the slopes!  I was a little nervous to ski, after my last traumatizing experience here.  All of my bruises weren't even healed yet and I was going back for more.  However, this time things went much better!  There was nice fresh powder and I rented really nice skis.  I didn't even fall once!  It was so beautiful up there that I don't think I would have cared if I broke a leg anyways.  The only bad experience was yet another with these butt-pull things.  The swiss butt pull is designed for 2 people to ride together.  So the first time up, my friend was with me, coaching me, and everything went okay.  The second time, he decided to let me go by myself.  Huge mistake.  I tried 3 times and couldn't do it.  Finally, I gave up, and started pulling the thing with my arms.  After about 2 minutes I thought my arms were literally going to fall off, and I still wasn't even halfway up the mountain.  I couldn't drop it, because I was in the middle of the forest.  So I just had to suck it up.  It was probably the most awkward sight ever, me trying to pull this thing and somehow hold onto my poles too.  I made it to the top though, even though I definitely lost my poles somewhere along the way.  Luckily some nice lady picked them up on her way and brought them to me.  The rest of the day we tried to steer towards the chair lifts and gondolas.   So overall it was a great weekend, it was really good to see some familiar faces, and I also am very happy that I have regained my confidence as a decent skier!

La Bresse

This past Friday I went on a night skiing trip with my students and some of the teachers from school.  Wow, what an experience!  I have been skiing for a pretty long time, and I am really not a bad skier.  I am to the point where I never fall and feel really comfortable with it.  Well, that all changed on Friday.  First of all I had to rent skis, boots and poles since I decided not to lug all my ski equipment over here with me.  I decided to go for the cheaper rentals, mistake #1.  When we got to the resort, called La Bresse, I went up the mountain first with the 2 ski instructors from school.  Mistake #2.  Of course they take us on the biggest, steepest slope there.  So ok, I'm fine, I'm confident, I can do this, right?  Well we start heading down the mountain, the ski instructors are around me doing like intricate jumps and skiing backwards.  Then there's me, trying to get used to these new skis and boots, and trying to stay calm about the fact that the entire hill was straight up ice. So after about 1 minute, I have my first wipe out.  We are talking both skis off, poles flying, wipe out.  No big deal, get up and start going again.  I start going and boom.. wipe out #2.  This continued at least 6 times on that first hill.  So once I get to the bottom, I realized that my boot had come unhooked during the first fall, which was the cause of the other 5 falls.  Ok so no big deal, one of the instructors helped me fix the problem and we went back up for another run.  Once I got used to my skis things started to go better!  Of course these guys come to this resort like once a week, so they decided to take me on the pitch black non existent trails going through the trees!  I seriously thought I was going to die.  But since I am here to tell the story, looking back it was pretty fun.  Now, next challenge, the "tire fesse."  This means a "butt pull."  Sounds easy, right?  You have to sit your butt on this little round thing and it pulls you up the hill.  Ok this would be easy for someone who has done this forever, but for me it was a different story.  I wiped out at least 3 times trying to get on this thing.  French people think I am crazy.  Anyways, by the end of the night I had finally accustomed myself to this new French skiing experience, and it ended up being really fun!  I also learned some new french vocabulary, which is how to say "bruises."  I have so many of them I can barely sit down.   

Home Sweet Home

After almost a full 24 hours of traveling, I finally made it back to Cleveland!  It feels good to be home.   Happy holidays to everyone :) 

Light Festival in Lyon

First of all, sorry I am kind of slacking on this blog situation.  I have been super busy slash lazy so there really isn't much of an excuse.  This past weekend I went to the "Fete des Lumières" in Lyon, France.  This is a famous light festival that has been going on for years.  It is a 4 day long festival where they light up all of the historical buildings at night.  It is almost like watching a movie on a historical building, it was really cool!  I met my friend there that lives in Aix en Provence.  She is an assistant too,  and we lived in Avignon together when I was studying abroad in college.  So the light festival was super busy, and I almost got my camera stolen (luckily I have reflexes like a jungle cat), but it was definitely worth seeing!  And thank god that it didn't rain like it was supposed to!  

Lyon 

How precious!