When you give an exchange student a GA...

Salut!

One of the many perks about being an exchange student in Switzerland (besides the beautiful mountains, heavenly chocolate, etc.), is that every student gets a GA. A "GA" is a transportation pass that allows you to travel for free on all trains, boats, and buses. Pretty cool right? So, basically I try take advantage of this pass every chance I get. One Friday I got out of school early, so Laura and I met up to go to some museums in Geneva. Now, I haven't really said much about Geneva, mostly because there's not much to say. Out of all the cities in Switzerland, it is defiantly my least favorite, which is funny because at least for me when someone said something I automatically thought of Geneva. But no, (as you'll see from the pictures), Geneva is defiantly not the highlight of Switzerland. Besides the museums, and the UN, there's really not much to see. But off we went to see the Watch museum, and after walking around trying to find it, we get to the place and it's closed. Great. So, basically we just enjoyed the o, so lovely views of Geneva.  The next day we visited the St. Bernard museum in Martigny (right down the mountain from St. Bernard), where the rescue St. Bernard's are kept during the winter. It took us forever to find the place, but when we got the it was a really neat little museum to visit.

Watch museum we never got to go inside...

Oooo beautiful Geneva :)

 

  Laura and I also visited Luzern, such a beauitful city! Here are some pics from that:

No Becky! :)

Hot Air Balloons and Helicopters-The Rest of January

Salut!

Well seeing as we're already well into March, I thought it might be time for me to update a little. :) So with this post you should be caught up through January.

Rotary Fondue:
My Rotary Club here is a little different from Sooner Rotary Club. First of all there are no women in the club (which is unfortunately true for a lot of european clubs), but also once a month they hold their meeting in the evening and usually have an outing of some sort. In January we went to a little chalet/restaurant in Sorens and listened to a presentation from a naturalist/artist about his experiences in the wild. At first I was a bit confused because his presentation sounded a bit like a folk legend (it didn't help that he was showing slides of wolfs in the woods at night that he had drawn), but a little ways into it I picked up on the fact that he was talking about his experiences in the forests of Switzerland. After the presentation we had fondue (yum!), and then a tray of different types of amazing little creme brulee. There was also a former exchange student from Australia there that was visiting one of her families, so I got to talk to her about her experience her, which was neat. Hopefully after my year is up I'll have the chance to come back too. :)

 Here are some pictures from the evening:

My counselor and I with our yummy Swiss fondue

Hannah from Aussieland and Megan the other exchange student from New York

Desert! 

Rotary District Conference Flag Parade and the Hot Air Balloon Festival:

No, there weren't any hot air balloons at the conference, but there was a lot of… Just kidding, I'll try and keep my corny jokes to a minimum :)

The district conference was held in Lausanne at the hotel school, and about half the exchange students came to participate in it. (There are only three districts in all of Switzerland). You'll be glad to know the lovely USA was well represented, considering about 70% of the students are from there haha. We all marched in, sang a Swiss song, and then the Rotarians gave us little chocolates with the Rotary symbol on them (so Swiss). Afterwards, we eat lunch there and talked with the Rotarians. It was a lot of fun to see all the other exchange students and catch up on how everyone was doing, also the chocolate was pretty good too. :) 

Here are some photos:

Kathleen was so excited… :)

USA! plus Mexico

Here we go….

Now for the part of the story for which this post is named. After the flag ceremony I, along with several other exchange students decided to go to the hot air balloon festival being held in Chateau d'Or, which is near Gstaad. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the train to get there was a panoramic train, so we had a lovely ride through the mountains. I will definitely miss scenic train rides through the Alps, not so much taking the bus everyday, but the train rides in the mountains for sure. We get to this little festival and walk around trying to find out if it's possible to ride in a hot air balloon. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a hot air ballon to ride in, however we did find a helicopter. At first, we were all thinking "there's no way we can take a ride, let's just go get a picture" famous last words haha. We decided that you only get the chance to take a helicopter ride through the Alps once in your life, so we went for it. It was INCREDIBLE! Definitely something I'll never forget. Here are some photos: