Fires and Museums

This will probably be my last post for a week or so unless I can get to a computer on our trip. So last night was really fun. We went over to Tucker's house and alot more people showed up then planned, so we made a bonfire in this fire pit in a field near his house. We stayed up till 3am or something, but it was really fun just hanging out.

Today I slept alot and then we went to "Nuit des Musees" in Lausanne where you pay 10 francs and get into all the 20 museums in the city from 2pm-2am. Despite the fact that we were all beat from the night before, it was still really interesting. I just got home a few minutes ago and now have to pack for tomorrow. We leave at 9:15 tomorrow morning for our week long Paris/Brussels trip. I am not looking forward to having to trek across Paris tomorrow through the metro with our huge 40 person group. But oh well, at least it will be a chance to sleep. The trip should be fun, I'm quite excited. I'll try and update during the trip at an internet cafe or something, but decided it was not a wise decision to bring my laptop.

That's all for now. I don't have any cool new pics or anything, but I should have plenty after this trip. Hugs and love.

TGIF

YAY! finally friday. so it was a great friday. This morning we had a speaker who talked about the European Union for 3 hours, it was so boring and also kind of interesting at the same time. After that we went to the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) near the lake which is free. When we got of the bus, it was right across from the WTO (World Trade Organization) and UNICEF. It was pretty sweet, that all these places I've been reading about in books for the past few years..I am seeing in person and they are a 5 minute bus ride away.

So we hung out in a grassy area for a little while to eat lunch and talk. Below is a pic of the group:

everyone slowly drifted off as we had advisoree meetings today, so chels, megan, annie, and i just walked around and then walked down by lake and got icecream. we then had our meetings and i got home around 6pm. it was so nice just to have a chill day. tonight im going into nyon to a friends house to hang out with the group (pictured above)

love you all and miss you and here are some other pics of the garden:

hugs and love.

VIDEO POST!

HELLO! so basically i am awesome. ok not really, but i posted a video so all you dedicated followers can actually see me (and when i say all, i really mean like 4 family members). but anyways, yea, i hope you like it and feel free to comment...like if you want to see more pictures or want more videos or what. hugs and love.

Birthday!

ok, so i'm going to write a little and also post my video, as well as picture. hopefully it will make this blog more fun, since i think everything i write is quite boring and my dad commented to me how he loves it because it reflects my personality (i was a little taken aback as the writing is fairly bland i thought). so this is my effort to spice things up.

so after a crazy weekend at electrosanne, monday was fairly dull. , then french in the afternoon (typical). then that night i had work to do as we had a paper due yesterday (wednesday).

then tuesday...BIRTHDAY! 21! i wasn't actually that excited about my birthday, i was pretty neutral as i am already of legal drinking age here although it will definitely be nice finally able to drink legally when i return to the states. we had a trip to the UN and UNHCR (United Nations High Commisioner on Refugees). both speakers were pretty bad and i was basically falling asleep all morning. Ace's hostmom made me an apple tart for my birthday (apparently a very swiss thing to do, its in a round cake pan) which was funny when we brought it through security at the UN. below is a picture of Ace, Annie, and I holding the cake in front of a sign inside the UN:

sidenote...to enlarge the pic just click on it.

we ate lunch at the UN cafeteria where Annie bought me a bottle of wine and they gave me my birthday presents which consisted of a very funny card, temporary tattoos, and 3 chocolate bars. below is the card they gave me...its especially funny for us because whenever we play that "what animal would everyone be" game, we always say annie would be an organgatan and she gets really mad, so of course she is the orangatan on the card.

in the afternoon i had french but i had to leave early as i had an interview with the Director of the Global Institute for Water and Health (for all our papers, we have to incorporate interviews so we have first hand research and can network) which went really well. when i got home my package finally arrived from home (thanks mom and dad!!) although i realized why it took so long: mom, you completely forgot to put the street address on it, ha. you put:

ashley st.john

chez rolf russ

1270 trelex

switzerland

and forgot about the "13 ch. du couchant", haha. but i guess since its such a small town and at least you remembered to put my host family's name on it that they figured out where to send it. anyways, so i went for a run, ate dinner with my host family, and had tiramisu for dessert that my host mom made for my bday. then the rest of the night consisted of finishing my 10 page paper which was due yesterday.

all in all, it was definitely a good birthay, despite the fact that i didnt get to truly celebrate turning 21 in the cliche sense.

yesterday was a really good day. we had 2 more speakers at the UN, one on disarmament which was so interesting and one woman from OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs) which was also really good. after that i finished revising my paper. no french yesterday which was a nice day off. in the afternoon chelsey and i we're on a mission for and waterbottles. my camelback waterbottle that i got for christmas leaks (which is such a bummer) so i wanted to get a SIGG bottle since they are swiss made, but they are definitely not as common here as in the US so after searching for 45 minutes, i got a purple hannah montana one from the kids section of the dish section of the bottom floor of a department store. i want lie, its pretty sweet, i know you are all jealous.

that night was good too, i felt relieved to have the paper over with. chelsey lives in a town nearby, so we ran and met in the middle then explored all these cool paths through meadows and the forest. then last night i decided i owed it to myself to go out since i didn't get to on my birthday. i took the train into nyon and met up with megan, but everyone was in gland (a town a 5 minute train ride away) because 5 people live there. so megan tucker and i took the train there to meet up with some people at a bar. it was pretty quiet since it was a wednesday, but still fun nonetheless. of course the trains stop running early and we are all too cheap to even consider a taxi so we crashed at our friend seth's house and woke up at 6:45am to take the train back to nyon and get ready for the day.

i was planning on taking the train home to get changed since it was another business casual day, but i didn't have time because of the schedule so chelsey brough a skirt for me and i borrowed megan's heels so i could look semi-presentable. before the train to geneva, we sat at pub de la gare, a bar right across from the train station and 3 of the guys got guinness (as it is the 250th anniversary of guinness today). i refrained from having a beer at 8 in the morning, but didn't feel too bad as we had done irish car bombs last night.

our morning class was really good today. we went to visit a museum that used to be an old house on these beautiful grounds and a professor gave us a tour and told us all about history. of course the one day i wear heels is the one day that instead of sitting and listening to a lecture we were walking and standing for 2 hours, so my feet were hurting alot. but it was all really cool what he told us, switzerland is basically amazing.

i came home early today since my french class was cancelled. so finally i have time now to update my blog (thanks if you are even still reading, i know its a long post) and chill out, maybe even catch up on sleep.

this weekend should be really fun, saturday night in Laussane is "nuit des musees" so from 2pm-2am you pay 10 francs and can get into all of Lausanne's 26 museums. then after it ends is a huge party (or so my host sister says). so we are planning to go (obviously) and just go straight to geneva from there at 7am since we are leaving at 8:30am to go to Brussels. we are justifying this all nighter since we have all day sunday to sleep on the train. so yea, we leave sunday morning for brussels and then go to paris on wednesday. we'll get back to geneva the following sunday. it should be a super fun trip and we have lots of free time to explore and go out.

i think thats about all for now, oh except one random thing. i am absolutely obsessed with gruyere, its a swiss cheese. i have had bread and cheese every day for lunch and am planning to continue with that when i go home (if my face hasnt blown up too much from gaining weight-i am not prepared to deal with abroad pictures like our ones from italy-mom, dad, chris, and al, you know what im talking about, ha).

ill try to update my blog in paris and brussels although i don't know how much time i'll have. and thanks for all the birthday cards and emails everyone!! i miss you all and love you!!

oh and just for fun, here is a picture of me eating the apple tart.

PICTURES!

this is the view from "La Dole" (picture of it is underneath this blurb) which we climbed the second weekend here

view from halfway there
pictured below: i took this sitting at the train station in my town one saturday afternoon, the pasture is empty here, but there are usually 5 or 6 horses there and you can see the lake in the distance and the mountains

so sorry everyone, i know that my blog is boring without any pictures to look at. so i'm going to add a bunch now and update later tonight.

this is a view of the jet d'eau (the big fountain) down a walkway by the lake, so beautiful

Bern and Electrosanne

Lots of new updates, I've been forgetting to update. So this past Wednesday we went to Bern (September 16). We took a train from Geneva. It's a really old city surrounded by a river. We had a tour in the afternoon and then that night went out to dinner at a cute little place across the river.

The next day we heard 2 speakers in the morning and then had the rest of the day off. Chels and I went to an art museum in the afternoon which was really fun and then that night a group of us went out to dinner. Ace has a friend from Zurich named Andrea who met up with us so that was fun. After dinner we got drinks then went to a club in Bern with some locals that Annie and some other had met the night before. It was really fun but a late night.

Friday morning Ace, me, Tucker, Steve, and Jason went to the Museum of Communication which was so fun. It was really interactive. We took the train home that afternoon and we were all completely exhausted. I stayed in that night to start work on my big paper due Wednesday and got to sleep early.

Saturday (September 19) I did some more research for my paper then Meg and I went to watch Ace in her frisbee game. She joined a team and they had a huge tournament yesterday which was really fun to go to. That night, Annie, Megan, me, and some other people went to Electrosanne. It's this huge electronic music festival in Lausanne (a city about 30 minute away). It takes place in 5 clubs and lasts from 7pm-5am. Once you get a wristband you can go to any of the clubs all night. We didn't get into Lausanne until 11:30 and then took a 5:20am train home. It was such a crazy fun time. We listed to famous DJ's and danced all night long.

I got home at 7:30am this morning and proceeded to sleep until 3:30pm and I feel surprisingly ok right now considering I was watching the sunrise this morning over the lake on the train back. Tomorrow we have a review session in the morning then French in the afternoon, then Tuesday we go to the UN in the morning and I have an interview with a director of a water conservation NGO in the afternoon for my paper which should be interesting. Oh yea, and my birthday is on Tuesday. It doesn't feel as monumental as a 21st birthday should as I am already legal to drink here, but it will definitely be a major plus when I get home. My friends are planning something for it so that should be fun. That's about it, I'll try to update more frequently. Hugs and love everyone

Lots of updates

Hey all-

I have lots to update due to my previously broken computer...

So this past weekend was amazing. I went with my friends (Chels, Annie, Megan, and Steve) to Zermatt which is in the southern part of Switzerland in the Alps. It's a super tourist town which you can only get to by train. It's in a really high altitude and surrounded completely by mountains. It's home to the Matterhorn which you can see from everywhere in town.

I woke up at 6am saturday morning to take a 7:10am train. We got there by 11am, stopped by the tourist office to figure out a good hike then went to our hostel. We brought lots of food so we could make sandwhiches and stuff and then went hiking. We took a train up to a base camp of sorts called Sunnega Paradise and then hiked from there. It was sooo beautiful. The Alps are huge and amazing and the day was perfect. We hiked by little lakes, sheep, and had a view of the matterhorn the entire time.

On the way down we got a little lost and ended up in Winkelmachen, a little neighborhood area of Zermatt, where a street festival was going on a with a local folk band. We got cafe bailey's as by the this point it was cold and raining/snowing. After that we went back to the hostel to chill for a little bit. We were hanging out in the lounge and met a Canadian guy named Ben. Then another guy came in named Jerry who is Swiss-German (Ben and Jerry, ha) and told us about a street festival.

So we went to that which turned out to be the same one in Winkelmachen, but this time a Swiss-German band was playing American cover songs. It was sooo fun hanging out with all the people and listening to the music. We got the munchies around 12am so we went into a tent and got Raclette which is cheese and potatoes and little onions and pickels and stuff.

In the morning we just walked around Zermatt and took a 10:30 train back home. All in all it was such a fun weekend. Despite the fact that we barely slept it was definitely worth it.

Yesterday (monday):

Pretty boring day, we had a field studies seminar from a Professor at the Graduate Institute in Geneva which was painful to sit through, then French in the afternoon. I had to drop off my computer which had majorly freaked out and wasnt working at the apple store. Then later that night I went over to Ace's house to hang out.

Today (Tuesday 9/15):

I got a call at 9:30am that made my day, it was the apple store saying my computer was fixed!, yay! so I went and picked it up on the way to Geneva then headed to my advising session for my ISP (Independent Study Proposals) then French in the afternoon. I went for a run, had dinner with the fam, and then have mostly been packing for Bern since we leave tomorrow morning. That's all for now, I'll write about Bern when I get back on Friday. Hugs and love.

revised address

Hi everyone-

I'll write an update in the letter, but here is my revised address:

Ashley St.John chez Rolf Russ

Ch. du Couchant 13

1270 Trelex

Switzerland

ah, its been 2 weeks?!

Sooo yesterday was September 8. It was a fairly uneventful day, we had a lecture in the morning then my friends and I went to the same crepe place as last week for lunch (we're thinking every tuesday will be crepe day). Then French in the afternoon. I went for a run when I got home, I ran for 30 minutes and was completely beat and exhausted so I walked the last 15 minutes home. Dinner was great, per usual, we had roquesha (I have no idea how to spell it, but Switzerland is famous for it. It's potatoes with cheese that are kind of like homefries)

Today was pretty much the same except we ate down by the lake for lunch and had a lot of time so played frisbee in the park by the lake right near the WTO (World Trade Organization) which was pretty cool. The day was absolutely beautiful and all I wanted to do was swim. This afternoon I walked with Chels and Ace around Old Town a little bit which was fun, it reminds me alot of Prague. I decided to take a day off on the running since I've been pushing myself pretty hard, but will definitely be going tomorrow. Tonight was fun, I made pancakes for dinner for my family (or griddlecakes rather, from the Fannie Farmer), they turned out really well, I made some with blueberries and some with raspberries and the fam loved them! I was a little worried since I'm not the best cook but I was very happy how they turned out so that was good.

Also on the major plus side, tomorrow is a holiday in Geneva so we have off from class. A lot of people are making day trips to places but I think a few friends and I are just going to go the beach in Nyon. It should be a super chill and relaxing day. We're going to bring a picnick of sandwhiches, fruit, and wine and lay out and swim. Oh and sleeping in before that, I can't wait.

I am also very excited about this weekend. The original plan was to go to Zermatt for the weekend which is apparently an amazing city in the Alps where the Matterhorn is. But now apparently it might be raining/snowing there, so if thats the case we are going to take a train to Zurich instead. I love that we can go anywhere and not have to decide early and just take off at a moments notice. The freedom is amazing.

Well that's all for now, hugs and love.

awesome day: September 6-7

So enough trying to figure out what day it is. So yesterday was sunday september 6. I slept in late, till 12:15pm i think. It's nice because my host sisters sleep in around the same time so I don't feel bad about it. My host parents were going on a hike and invited me to go but I was still tired and sore from Saturday's hike that I decline. Instead I went with my friend Megan to France which is right across Lake Geneva. We took a huge cool old boat from Nyon to Yvoire (about a 20 minute ride). Yvoire is an old medieval town right on the lake. It's basically just a touristy town with shops, icecream places, and restaurants, but its so cute and beautiful. It was such a gorgeous day and I absolutely loved being on the lake. It was also neat to have a view of Switzerland since I'm always looking across the lake at France.

Today was an awesome Monday, surprisingly since I usually intensely dislike Mondays. This morning we went to the International Red Cross and had 2 presentations by people who work there about what the Red Cross does and some of its different missions and then a lawyer talked about International Humanitarian Law. It was super interesting. It was another gorgeous warm sunny day, so for lunch my friends (the same 3, Annie, Ace, Chelsey) and I took the tram to the University Park. It's a big park with lots of grass, benches, a restaurant, and an outside icecream stand. It also has huge chessboards (you have to stand up to play) and the pieces are probably 3 feet high. Lots of old men and business guys play around lunch time. We just got sandwiches from a bakery and ate in the grass.

French was in the afternoon...nothing new there. Then after, Ace, Chelsey, and I went to see the Horlage Fleurie which is a big clock whose face is made out of flowers. It was pretty cool, but was really just something for us to cross off our sightseeing list. We hung out in the park by the lake for a little while then took one of the little ferry taxes back across the lake to the side where the train station is.

I got home around 7:15 and went for a run. I don't know what it is, maybe all the healthy food, or the air, or mountains, or lake or something. But I just feel fantastic. I went for a 45 minute run through the woods and fields and probably could have gone longer except for all my leg muscles were really starting to hurt. I definitely want to keep running and get in shape. I'm sure I'll be doing more hiking as well.

So that's about it, oh and I watched some of the Roger Federer match in the US Open, he is my host dad's idol (since Federer is Swiss). Hopefully this weekend my friends and I are going to to Zermatt, which Chelsey's host dad says is the best city in Switzerland. So things are great here, and I'm definitely almost completely adjusted. Hugs and love and keep in touch!

...continuation

....so yes, thursday I went for a run. Then friday we had off of class but had a mini-project. For our field studies seminar we were put into 6 groups and each group had to go to a different library/organization in the city and basically find out everything about the place then we will give a presentation on it. Its just for our benefit so we know about the different libraries in the city. My group went to the International Environment House. It was a cool place, it is basically a cooperative of a bunch of environmental organizations in Geneva and it had a small library.

After that me and my friends Tucker and Andy met up with Ace in old city (which is older, hence the name) and just walked around a bit. We spent awhile looking for a cheap place to eat (everywhere is soo expensive) and then got on a random tram for fun to see where it took us. We ended up in a completely different part of the city and got caught in the rain. We made our way down to the lake and then took a taxi/ferry boat across the lake because we had to get back to the SIT office for a meeting.

After the meeting, I went home and went for a run with my host-mom. The loop is probably 1.5 miles maybe, I ran the first with her slow and then the second fast by myself. It is so cool running through the woods with no sounds but birds chirping and the wind, I loved it. Then we had another great dinner of chicken and quinoa (Chris and mom will love that). Then I took at 10:35pm train into Nyon to meet up with some friends. We hung out at a bar there for awhile and then took a 12:15 train home (while the trains are great, the last one is at 12:15 and the next isn't until 5am). I slept in this morning and when I woke up, organized a hike with some friends. (oh and Mimi, my hiking boots are awesome. They have taken no time at all to break in and were so perfect for the hike)

Me, Ace, Chelsey, Annie, Tucker, and Steve took the train farther up into the mountains to a town called St-Cergue. Right when you get off the train, there are a bunch of signs for different hikes to do. My host dad had told me about one called La Dole which is a peak in the Jura mountains. The town is so cute and is a ski town in the winter. The hike to La Dole was about 2.5 hours and so fun. We walked sometimes through the woods but alot through hill type pastures. There were cows everywhere, you are literally like a foot away from them and they all have giant bells on them so the whole hike you hear constant ringing, it was amazing. As we got higher, the views got better. We had an amazing view of Lake Geneva, the French Alps, and Montblanc (which is a MASSIVE mountain, it looks like its just floating in the clouds because its covered in snow. it looks like a castle in the air, so incredible). The top of La Dole was amazing too. We sat up there for probably 30 minutes along the ridge eating snacks, talking, and taking in the view.

We took a slightly different route down and ended up in St-Cergue again where we caught the train just in time. The whole hike was probably about 5 hours and everyone had an awesome time. It was definitely my favorite day so far. Tonight I'm having dinner here and then probably going into Nyon again with friends. I will post pictures soon, but I'll have to wait and steal some from my friends cameras, the quality on mine doesnt capture the incredibleness of it all.

Oh and minor sidenote, Mikhail Gorbachev is speaking at the UN on October 5 about "Resetting the Nuclear Armament Agenda" so my friends and I are registering and going. How crazy is that. I am definitely going to keep updated about speakers and stuff, tons is going on in Geneva all the time.

Days 9-10 and part of 11

Im leaving to go on a hike soon with some friends so this post will be short, but I will catch up on everything later today, I know I'm a little behind.

So thursday, we had a lecture in the morning on International Security. I thought it was going to be boring, but actually ended up being really interesting despite the fact that he kept us until 12:30 (usually we end at 12). After that we grabbed some quick sandwiches at Migros, which is a grocery store. It was not good at all, so won't be going back. Then french in the afternoon, nothing new.

When I got home I went for my first legit run which was amazing! I just explored through the woods and roads, went through a bunch of fields past cows and horses. I ran for 35 minutes and was pretty proud of that. ok thats all for now...time to hike...more to come

Days 7-8: More class and the UN

So yesterday was September 1 (so crazy!) We had our Field Studies Seminar in the morning which is kind of like an anthropology class, but all about field research so we will be doing projects actually researching a topic that has to do with Swiss life and making contacts with people and conducting interviews then synthesizing everything. So it should be really interesting and its supposed to prepare us for our ISP (Independent Study Project) which is the last 4 weeks of the program where we choose any topic we want and research it through interviews with experts and stuff. It's completely open ended, so we can do any topic we're interested in.

Then for lunch a few friends and I went to a creperie which was AMAZING! (slightly different then yours Chris since I had more of a meal crepe). I had a "crepissimo" which has ham and cheese inside with a sunny side egg on top. Then we had more french in the afternoon. Despite class being almost 3 hours, it goes by pretty quickly and I think it will definitely help with my grammar and speaking.

That night when I got home I went for a run with my host mom on these cool trails in the woods near our house. I was worried I wouldnt be able to keep up since I'm so out of shape, but so is she so it was more of a jog/walk which was fine by me. I will probably start running more though, there are lots of cool trails around. It was nice though because we were able to talk alot. She is originally from France and really nice.

Today we had to get to class by 9 instead of 9:30 which was hard waking up. Our guest speaker today was an expert from the International Migration Organization (IMO) and he talked to us all about migration and immigration and all that. It was kind of boring, alot of statistics but definitely interesting. We then went straight from class to the United Nations. (as a sidenote, when we have guest speakers and go to organizations we have to wear business casual, so to Chris and mom, I wore the amazing black skirt that chris found which I absolutely love and got so many complements on)

It was pretty surreal being there. Since I'm an International Relations Major, the UN is talked about all the time so it had kind of become this place far away, sort of imaginary. So it was crazy being there. The UN has a great library and we get passes for it, so we had to wait a long time to get our pictures taken and badges made. But its pretty sweet, for the next 4 months I can go to the UN whenever I want to. We then had lunch in the cafeteria there which was crazy since it was lunch hour and really cool because people of so many nationalities are all around.

We then had a tour of the library which was boring but will definitely be useful. We got finished early today (around 3:30) so a bunch of got off the train in Nyon (the big town that I switch trains in). We walked around and then got some gelato which was amazinggggg. After that my friend Ace and I just missed the 5:17 train so we had to wait for the 5:53. I had to power walk home as I was getting picked up for the group fondu party at 6:15. The program hosted the night for us and all the families. It was up this super windy hill all the way up a mountain (I felt so car sick, obviously) but it was so beautiful and amazing.

The fondu was great and it was a really fun atmosphere. (to my fam, it was the type of place like the one we went to in Italy, middle of nowhere, and so local). I was sooo full though by the end and I am completely exhausted. We only have 2 more days of class left this week and then my friends and I are figuring out some fun plans for the weekend. Maybe a hike or a trip to a nearby city called Lausanne which is apparently soo fun. That's all for now, hugs and love to you all.