Two Weeks of Adventure

Sorry I didn't post this past week. Now that classes have begun, I've had to start portioning out my time between homework and everything else.

Last weekend, a lot of students traveled out of town for the first time. Instead of that, a few friends and I decided to get to know Lausanne a little better:

On Friday night after dinner, we walked down to the town square to see what was happening. We decided to check out this karaoke joint just for fun.

We had a great time, listening to francophones singing songs in English and listening to some of the popular French tunes belted out, too.

The girls convinced me to go up there and give it a shot. I sang a song by Kelly Clarkson and really enjoyed it! We may go back again soon.

On Saturday, we went to lac leman (aka Lake Geneva) to one of the beach areas. The lake was pretty cold, but it was really calm compared to my experiences in the waters of Malibu. There were also some very friendly swans there to great us. : )

My friend Elle had wanted to dye her hair a bit darker for a while, so I had a blast fixing her up. I even gave her a haircut afterwards. Don't worry, though. She likes it a lot!

On Sunday, we went back to the Church of Christ and stayed for an amazing pot luck afterwards. (We brought a couple trays of tomato-mozerella salad as our contribution.) I took a nap and also went to "house church" that evening, the mini-serivce hosted in the visiting professor's flat. Monday was a Canton holiday, so we didn't have class and I just caught up on homework and resting.

Yesterday, a dozen of us made a day-trip to the chocolate factory and the infamous Gruyere fromagerie as well.

The Nestle/Cailler factory is in Broq-Fabrique, a little town about an hour away by train. They give free tours and factory prices to visitors!

At the end of the tour, they lead you into a room filled with free chocolate samples. Guess what! It's all you can eat. Let's just say I walked away with a bit of a tummy ache.

Here are some of the molds they use for the chocolate during Christmas and Easter.

At the original Gruyere fromagerie (or cheese factory), the cheese is aged for 6 months to a year in the cellar behind me so it aquires its great tastes and textures.

Before that, though, the chese is pressed for about 24 hours and flipped to get the excess liquid out. Also, it's dipped in a salt bath for another 12 hours to give it its salt content and get all the water out.

Down in Gruyere, we noticed a sign pointing to Moleson Village and we headed over there to take a look. It's a cute little ski-resort town with summer activities like mini-golf.

Unfortunately, the town closes everything (inlcuding this HUGE bob-luge) at 4 p.m. on Friday afternoons--we arrived at 4:03. I hope we can go back there before winter kicks in because it looked like a great time.

Classes are going well. All of my professors definitely have Swiss standards for academic excellence, which is a really great thing.

• French is taught by M. Carrel, a language professor from the Univeristy of Lausanne. He makes class interesting, but he also challenges us at lot. This week we focused on proper pronunciation and he recored us reading a text as a test at the end of the week.
• Humanities is taught by Dr. Elizabeth Strebel, an American lady who has lived here for the past 25 years with her Swiss husband. Her class has a lot of requied reading, but the lectures are interesting and she points out things that we can do related to the course (like visit such-and-such museum to see this piece of art).
• Sociolgy is taught by Mme. Pulfrey, an English woman who has also lived in Switzerland for a while now. I love her class a lot and feel like it might be my favorite this semester.
• Geology is taught by Mme. Weber, a Swiss geologist. She really knows her stuff, but I think this may be one of my hardest classes. I really like what we've learned so far, though.

Today, I'm doing laundry and homework. The laundry machines here are a lot different than the American ones I'm used to, but the hotel staff has been really helpful in that area. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to go grape-picking! A Belgium lady named Laura from the restaurant we have our group dinners at arranged for a handful of us to go to a vineyard to help out. The wine producer provides breakfast and lunch, and trains us how to properly pick grapes. I'm really excited about it!

I'll try to post again soon!

Class Schedule, etc.

Monday: French, 8 am to 9 am
Geology, 12:30 to 2:30

Tuesday: French, 9:05 to 10:05
Humanities, 12:30 to 2:15

Wednesday: French, 8 am to 9 am
Sociology, 12:00 to 3:00
Geology, 3:15 to 6:45 (labs will take up half of class every other week)

Thursday: French, 9:05 to 10:05
Humanities, 11:30 to 1:15

Meals for us work like this:

Breakfast is served every morning (7 days a week) at our hotel. It's really great food and includes fruit, cheese, deli meat, boiled eggs, breads, jellies, peanut butter, Nutella, cereals, milk, coffee, hot cocoa, orange juice. It's buffet style, so I get plenty to eat!

Lunch is done on our own. Pepperdine got prepaid corporate cards set up for us with our name on them and everything. We can either withdraw cash or just pay with it. We have 12 francs five days of the week on there for that.

Dinner is a mix of two things: group dinner at a restaurant and the prepaid card thing. The group dinner is at Saint Gery, a little eclectic restaurant not too far from our hotel. On Tuesdays through Thursdays, we all eat the same dish there. For Sunday and Monday night, we have 16 francs to spend on food.

Weekends we're technically on our own, but food isn't all that expensive here so I'll use a lot of the leftover money for the weekend. For example, I can get a foot long sandwich for about 4.50 and I ate a great dinner tonight for 8.50 from the store. (We have a kitchen they let us use here!)

No cell phone yet, but I'm working on it! The grocery store sells prepaid ones fairly inexpensively so then I'll be able to call local numbers on it. Pepperdine is getting us some other phones, but they will just be to call other students here and the faculty within Switzerland. Therefore, I really need two phones. Ugh.

Church was great this morning! There is one Church of Christ in Switzerland and it happens to be 1.7 miles from our hotel on the bottom floor of the preacher's house. The sermon was all in French and they translated the prayers to English. Afterwards, the Smiths invited us up (all five of us) for some great taco salad and great fellowship. They've been in Switzerland for the past twenty years, but were raised in the US kind of. Also, there is a student church held in the building attached to our hotel that meets Sunday nights. They sing contemporary songs (like Hillsong's if you know them) in French and English and it looks neat. I didn't get to go tonight, but I want to next week.

That's all for now. I have to be up bright and early tomorrow morning!

Must Love Dogs

So dogs (very cute, pampered ones) are around every corner here in Lausanne. They make me miss Lacy a lot. But apparently if I get really desperate, I can actually rent a dog for the day down by the lake. Isn't that insane?!?

It was really hard to get a clear picture of this cross from inside Notre Dame because of the lack of light, so this was the clearest shot I could get without a tripod.

We took a boat around the lake to the city of Montreux. It was a gorgeous day out! After that we walked to an ancient chateau about fourty-five minutes further.

See why I'm being reminded of Lacy all the time? I'm pretty sure this is a French bulldog and not a Boston Terrier, but he looks like he could be her uncle.

My Room!

My desk is by the window that gives me great sunlight during the day. I've never had a roll-top desk before. How exciting!
I nicknamed this bed the "space-bed" because it looks like something out of Star Trek. It's a full bed (most people have twins) and I love it!
I have two pretty large closets. One stores my suitcases and three other peoples' as well; and one has my clothes in it. Oh, and that's Kim on her laptop sitting there. My room gets a good wireless signal so it's kind of the girls' headquarters for being online until we get everything working right.
Even though the main bathroom is just down the hall, I have my own sink in my room. It's so nice for getting ready in the morning!

La Croisee, our hotel-house!

Pepperdine has set up a student lounge (I think we're going to call it La Stange for short) for us to hang out in on a lower level of the hotel. Here's Jenna playing some pool.
We have a circle of couches in La Stange for meetings and just relaxing. Brittany and Morgan say "hi!"
Our visiting faculty, Dr. Sugimoto, and his family live with us here in the hotel. The two boys, Michael and Jack, even have a playground in our backyard!
Jo is our lovely assistant director. Here she is handing out keys for our rooms on the first night with JoAnne.

Pictures!

Hey y'all!

Here are a few of the pictures from the past two days.

-Laura

Mary, Pepperdine's Lausanne director. She picked us up at the airport and is so amazing already!
The view from the "backyard" of our hotel. How gorgeous is that?!?



Here I am in front of Lake Geneva. This is a park with fountains behind the courthouse right near our hotel.
It's already getting chilly out at night because of the wind so I got to break in my peacoat! We're on our way to dinner at Saint Gary's. We have dinner on our own four nights a week, but on Tuesdays through Thursdays we walk together to this restaurant for a "faimly meal."

I'm here!

We made it from Los Angeles to Paris, from Paris to Geneva, and then we took a bus to the hotel we live in. Praise the Lord everyone is safe!

I have my own room with a full bed and two closets! I don't have a view of the lake, but it's actually a good thing considering there are heavily used train tracks on that side. I'll get plenty of scenic views from outside my room anyway!

I have to be up early tomorrow to serve breakfast with my co-RA, Alex. They don't get to hire the couple of other students until tomorrow, so Alex and I are filling in.

I'm going to hit the hay now as I've been up for over twenty-four hours...

More to come (including pictures) tomorrow.

-Laura