Week 4: The Move and Beautiful Geneva

Monday was exciting because the woman I've been renting from came back from her trip. I was glad to meet the person whose home I've been living in for the last two weeks (these four photos are of the apartment). In EF if you work with the Tour department you get to go on one. Most people are placed on one within Europe which is cool, but because they all live here, they travel often and have already seen many things so they're not as excited about it. My housemate works with the high school tours and has been with the company for a long time and is higher up so she was placed on a 17 day tour of… New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii! Pretty amazing. Granted, she had to work, but all that entailed was being there and making sure the high school kids didn't get to wild. One thing she did was send herself a postcard. I has been my job to get her mail and I found it one day as I sorted. She just jotted down a few special memories and things to remember. It's a fun addition to a scrap book because you have a nice professional photo, a brief summary and the stamp, which will be really cool to see in 20 years. I might consider doing this…


Tuesday I got my first view of the second place I'm moving into (this one for 5 weeks, the first for 3), and I'm in love. It's a little two story apartment on the second level of a complex. Really nice! And my room has a slanted ceiling! I was just telling my Danish friend the other day that it would be cool to live in a room like that and now I get the chance! It's about a 30 min. walk to the office from the new place but it's right along the water and so beautiful that I know I'm going to love doing it each day. You can also take a bus for 2 Swiss Franks each way but I'd rather spend 2 of those 4 Franks (written CHF 4) on a nice baked good from the cute bakery across the street from my new place and walk. Hmmm save money, enjoy amazing food and a scenic walk and your clothes still fit! Sign me up! I moved in thrusday which I'm proud to say only took two trips and with out all the food i had i could have managed it in one. This gives me great hope for my flight home. I did however have a little adventure on my way back on the second bus, with a suite case full of food and shampoo, conditioner etc. I took the wrong bus so had to walk a good 15 min. in the rain up a hill. i was not excited.
On the walk back from seeing the apartment the fist time I heard bagpipes and sure enough there was a performance in the little theatre next to work. So I sat and read my bible for 20 min. while they finished getting warmed up then sat and enjoyed the first few songs. I love Luzern.

Wednesday was my first massage! A dangerous thing to do… They have wellness programs at the office so EF brings in people to do different things like facials, massages, manicures and pedicures and you just schedule your appointment with Reception and go. It still costs money and you just pay them the cash when your done but it's really cool that they come to the office. In fact, in Sweden it's a law that employers bring in these sorts of things. EF is a Swedish company so perhaps that's why we have this, but my masseuse said these wellness activities are becoming much more popular in Switzerland as well.

Friday we (my colleague from Boston and myself) went on the paddle boats! We'd been watching the weather all week to try to find a day that was clear enough for us to go at lunch and finally, on her last work day it came! We went for a brief little journey for 30 min then stopped by the Lion Statue which I had not yet seen. I was impressed. The area is very peaceful and he Lion appears to be in such pain he forces you to stop and consider his sacrifice. He lies dying, protecting the shield of his city.
After work I went to hang out with the students from church. this was my second time in the Zurich suburbs but further away than my first visit. One of my friends gave me directions via sms. so i took the train into Zurich, then the S-ban, next a bus, to the stop he said. There we met and he showed me where the apartment was. we all enjoyed dinner and talking. then i did the whole process in reverse but this time with two other girls.


Saturday was an early morning. I met Jacqueline, the my colleague from Boston at the train station and we enjoyed the beautiful 3 hour train into Geneva. Lucky for us we had beautiful weather. Geneva is in the French speaking part of Switzerland and we were both surprised by how different it felt from Luzern. To begin with, when i heard the French I felt lost and my first thoughts were "Oh my gosh! I don't speak the language!" This is so funny because I don't speak German either but I've gotten used to hearing the Swiss German and know I can find someone who speaks English or can get by. I am not however, used to French. Also, the people in Geneva look much more French. People were more dressed up and had a different attitude it seemed. There was a lot more make up too. In Luzern hardly anyone wears make-up. Mascara and a bit of eye liner is normal but really no eye shadow, blush or much lip sick. I Geneva some people were all done up. There were also many more tourists. Jacqueline and I were discussing how Luzern feels like a touristy sort of town but people go there to experience a bit of the Swiss culture, Geneva felt more like there were just tons of people making another tourist stop. I hope that makes sense. It was very strange to hear people on the street speaking English. I only hear English in the office. I almost hugged the first person who was obviously American, but I controlled myself :).
We had lunch then walked around for a while before shopping a bit. I continued in my pursuit of bargains and am proud to say I have only bought 3 things I think that were not on sale. One of which were shoes from a street vendor and i did bargain for them so I feel that number should really just be 2... There was a music festival all over the Old Town part of Geneva so after walking around for a very long time we laid down in the grass with about 1000 other people and listened to one of the bands. The festival was well organized. Each area was different types of music and there were food stands by different organizations, most of which were from different cultural groups. Because the UN meets there there are many NGOs and other things so there were stands from Kenya, Bolivia, Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, China, Panama, etc. We walked more and found a big marching style band playing covers of Avril Lavine (Complicated), Bon Jovi (It's my life) and other popular artists. I even got a little video on my camera. SO cool! Later we needed to wait for the people who were staying with that night so we went to Starbucks (in our defence, it was the only place that was on a main street that was open late! We needed to be easily accessible). They came later and brought us to their house. We were so grateful for an actual bed, not just a couch. We slept well, then had breakfast. The family we stayed with was wonderful. The couple was very hospitable and encouraging. They have two little boys, one of which is in the hospital with pneumonia so we went to visit him in the morning before church. He was doing better so we were all encouraged.
After service we walked around with 4 women from Kenya who are all working for different organizations in Geneva. One of the women was telling me about different African churches. I'm going to have to go visit the one in Nairobi! Anyway. We all had a lot of fun. At one point Jacqueline and I were taking some pictures by a flower and I took one of her and a group of Asian tourists came up and asked to take a picture with her. So one at a time 3 Asian guys posed with Jacqueline and the flower, then i took a group picture of all of them. It was so funny!








We had to catch an early train because we had a dinner date. Lucky for us it was not too full for us to have two seats each. We made good use of them. The president of the company i'm working for (the person I met in Germany with Mom, who offered me the internship) told her she had to go to meet the owner of his favorite restaurant/hotel. This is the same place he took us when he was here, my 2nd day of work. So we had gone to talk to her Friday. We told her how her restaurant and hotel was his favorite (which she already knows very well) and she said he was their favorite customer and she invited us to have dinner on Sunday. Woa, that dinner was AMAZING (see the pictures) and would have cost us a good CHF 100, but... was FREE. Just shows you how serious she was that they love the president of our company, she even sent Jacqueline back to Boston with a box of chocolate for him. I had turykey, and it was perfect and moist. Jacqueline had strips of veal with Roosti (a very swiss dish, similar to hashbrowns), then for dessert we split chocolate mousse and wood fruits ice cream/frozen yogurt piece of heaven. We stayed for 3 hours and at the end were able to talk with our hostess about her time managing the hotel and all the strict Swiss regulations. The hotel has 4 buildings which are from the 16th century so they won't allow anything to be taken out and anything she wants to do requires permission. The last few moments of our dinner I over heard the large group next to us tell their waiter as they were paying that they they were from California so I had to go over and say hello. Turns out they were from the Santa Clara county area and were just a few members of a large traveling Methodist choir group. Pretty cool.
At the end of our dinner Jacqueline and I parted company, she flew home to Boston Monday morning, and I walked back to my home. An exciting week!

Week 3: Life in Luzern and Weekend in Zurich

This week had a few adventures. One funny moment was on an application. There’s a space where the Au Pair writes their birthday. It says month:______ Day:______ Year:______ . This Au Pair wrote; month: March day: Saturday year: 1984. I was laughing so hard. There have been some other pretty funny translation things. One Au Pair wrote under special requests: “an accident that leaves me with physical damages” or something like that. Ya, I dono either!
There was a football game (meaning soccer) on Tuesday night which was really fun. It had been pouring all day and it was still coming down when they first started to play but stopped about 15 minutes in. there was still lots of mud which was pretty funny until... two guys on the same team collided and one guy broke his nose in 6 places. I heard it! It was gross.
There’s a girl from the Boston office here for two weeks. They’re doing exchanges so they’re sending people around to different offices to learn from each other. So because we’re the two newbies we did a bit of touring together and will be going to Lozan and Geneva this coming weekend. One afternoon we went up Mt. Pilatus, one of the large and beautiful mountains next to Luzern. Because EF gives so many tours and sends hundreds of people up the mountain they have two cards that they can give to whomever so they can go up for free. So cards in hand we made the short trip to the next town over and took the gondola up the mountain. There are 3 stops all together, one being the top so we got off at the 2nd one and looked around and took some pictures. At that stop they have one of the longest rope courses in Europe. Complete with Zip lines and a little toboggan-sledish thing. We got up to the top and there were lots of clouds but the weather has been so up and down that we were very excited for any views we got. Plus being inside a cloud was pretty cool. We took pictures, walked all over the top, had a yummy lunch and took a train down. The train down Mt. Pilatus is the steepest train in the world! Then we had a little adventure getting home. When you come down the mountain your in a little town very close to Luzern but on the other side of the lake. We got on the train back going the wrong way so we had a nice little 30 min. tour of the next town before going back.














Friday I went right into Zurich after work and met up with my Danish friend. We had dinner at a Chinese/Indian/tai restaurant, it was delicious then took a brief walk around before going back to her place. She rents a furnished flat that is beautiful! It has a balcony and the cool widows that can open in and out as well as tip up and down (so it’s closed at the bottom but the top is open, like a V). The owner loves Latin America and photography so there were many excellent photos of South America. I was most surprised however that next to the bed there was a poster that said MUSIC IN THE CITY, Downtown San Jose. I looked closer and it wasn’t talking about San Jose, Costa Rica but San Jose, CA! I was so excited.

Saturday she showed me around the city which is beautiful. It took a little while for the weather to clear up so I didn’t get to take many pictures. I did however buy some really cool Indian Flats (shoes) from a market that was cradled between the river and a few buildings and had many different stands selling a variety of beautiful things from India. At one point I saw a painted cow statue. This seems to be an international phenomenon. There were sharks in Down town San Jose, bears in Berlin, Lions in Munich… anyway. That evening we went to some stables where one of the girls in the church keeps her families horses because they were having an event. There was food, a live band, a mechanical bull and best of all… Swiss Alpenhorns! It was amazing to hear the men plan these horns. I must also mention that hearing a Swiss guy sing old-school country western songs in English is a once in a lifetime experience! Pretty funny.
To get to this event we had to take a few different trains then get off and take a bus, which we missed so we walked instead. We were rewarded with views of a quaint Swiss town. I don’t know where all the people were but at 18:00 on a Saturday night, the place was deserted. We also walked through some woods before finding the Stables.
After such a long journey we were starved. I went traditional and had Worst and potatoes with bread and salad, yummy. Then we just hung out and talked, danced, laughed until about 11:30. There were about 15-20 people from the church there. Some of whom I’d met, others I had not. The girl I was staying with left early so some other people give me a ride home. It was fun to be in a car and see the Swiss freeways.





Sunday service was great as usual, then lunch with a woman from Estonia I believe. She spent a year in NYC, moved home, married a Swiss guy and now lives in Zurich. There are so many people here from all over the world! Soon after lunch I went back to my Danish friend’s flat to get my things, then took the train home so I could talk to my dad before he went of to church in the morning (his time). We have breakfast every Sunday so it was comforting to talk to him on a Sunday. He even saved his breakfast to eat with me while we talked, and I ate my dinner. It was also special to talk to him because it was Father’s Day in the USA and in fact, the very first official Father’s Day in Switzerland (FYI, in Sweden it’s in November).
Well, that's this week!
As always, you're on my heart.

Love, Wildy

Week 2: Work in Luzern

Working here is fantastic! I love it. Everyone here works VERY hard and I really enjoy always having lots to do. From the moment I start at 8:30am (yes, everyone is here promptly at 8:30am, myself and a few others even come at 8:00 to check email or just get a head start) until I leave at 17:30 (5:30pm) there is non-stop action. During my time here I will be doing many different things including but not limited to; filing, manually entering applications, forwarding inquires from an online service to the country recruiters, weekly compiling stats of Au Pair recruitment by country, creating promotions e-mails, updating promotions on country websites (for these last two I get to learn a bit of HTML) and more! This week I’ve had introductions to all those things and entered many applications.
My first day I had the grand tour. This office in Luzern is located in a hotel right along the water. My first flat (an apartment but everyone here calls it a “flat”. I’ll be at this one for 3 weeks then I move into a small house for 5 weeks. I’m renting them while the owners are on vacation or “Holiday”), is located about 2 streets over, a whole 3 minutes walk from the office. To get to work we walk through the hotel and take a private elevator up to the EF zone. It makes me feel like I’m part of a secret society. The Cultural Care staff in Luzern is only 8 people, 9 with me, and there is one other girl who comes in 1.5 days a week to help enter apps, but there are about 200 EF people here total.
The first day after learning how to enter apps and do a few other things one of the girls took me to lunch. I had älplermagrone with apfelmus which is essentially Swiss Mac ‘n Cheese but it’s made with white Swiss cheeses not cheddar and you usually get it with apple sauce which you spoon over it. Surprisingly the apple sauce is a nice touch, especially at the beginning when it helps to cool it down so you can eat it. I didn’t end up leaving the first day until 6:45 or so because I didn’t yet know we’re done at 17:30 and I wanted to check some email. Everything here closes at 18:30 so I just went home. I think that night was the most difficult because after meeting tons of new people I had to go home to an empty house and still was not used to living alone. Since then it’s been better and better.

Tuesday and Wednesday were just work days, a trip to Migros, the supermarket, much like those in the US but it’s 3 stories I think. I bought butter, which I found to be sweeter and creamier than that in the US. I had my first Skype chat with my family 7:45am my time 10:45pm their time. I also got to go for my first jog along the lake. It was early in the morning and was breathtakingly beautiful. I just had to make sure I blew out my nose and closed my mouth when I jogged through the clouds of bugs.
Tuesday night was really fun because the president of Cultural Care was in town so he took us all out to dinner. He is a very charismatic man and loved by everyone in EF. He’s Swedish but has raised his family in the US. He was a diplomat before coming to EF so he’s used to the travel, good thing because he travels 3 weeks of every month. He’s the one who offered me this internship when I was at the National meeting in Germany with Mom in November. By the way, for dessert we had strawberries mixed with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, raspberry liquor and guess what… fresh ground black pepper! Yes. As it turns out, fresh ground black pepper is a nice addition of many fresh fruits (grapes, melons, strawberries…) so you’ll have to try it.

Thursday was far more exciting. I didn’t have work because it was a Catholic holiday, Corpus Christi. The bells of the church tower next to my flat woke me at 7 am on my day off. At first I thought it was so cute, when they were still going at 7:20 they had lost their cuteness. At 10:30 I had another surprise when a little marching band, costumes and all passed under my window followed by many eager church-goers. They played again at around 11:00.
I went into work to do email and have lunch with those who were working, which ended up being most of the EF staff (they can trade the holiday and get a long weekend later). I had my first Panini ever and was pleased, then went with a coworker to meet friends at, I’m ashamed to say, starbucks. She later went home and I went for a walk with the other two girls for 2 hours during that beautiful Luzern afternoon.
Later my Danish friend from Church met me for dinner. It was very encouraging to be able to talk with her about how things had been going and how I felt.

Friday is casual so I enjoyed wearing jeans to work. I also got a SIM card today! One of the girls had an extra cell phone so now I can be reached and I’ll know what time it is! I also had my first visit to Heini one of the Swiss bakeries. They have very nice whole wheat rolls that have bits of shredded veggies and cheese. Very nice. And a very small croissant, made with that fantastic Swiss butter so it was fantastic! If you go to their website (http://www.heini.ch/) you will see a very nice picture of Luzern. After work I took a few pictures out some of the office windows. You can see just what I mean when I say we're right next to the water. As I left I stopped to listen to the band that was playing in a little out door theatere along the water. There was a really cute old man dancing to the traditional Swiss music all by himself (I saw him the next day at Migros! ). Then I went for a nice long night walk around Luzern, enjoyed the pleasant weather and started to figure out my way around.





Saturday I got to explore Luzern a bit. Saturdays there is a market along the water so there were many stands all selling cheese and fresh fruits, veggies and baked goods. I bought some breakfast and then just decided to walk up the hill. I walked for about an hour in one direction just to see where I ended up and that happened to be in another little town similar to Luzern’s residential areas. I also got to walk through an amazing graveyard. I know that’s weird but it was just so beautiful I had to walk through. I walked back to town, picked up a few things (having never lived on my own I’m amazed by all the expenses, dishwashing soap, toilet paper, cleaning products, and food… all rather pricey), made some lunch and sat down to read. I read my bible in English and Spanish for a few hours which was very peaceful, especially because I had a cup of tea and by 16:00 (4pm) it had started pouring.

Sunday got up early to go for a jog and it was the most beautiful day yet. The rain had totally cleared the area around the mountains and you could see everything. I spend the first few moments of my jog laughing, actually laughing because I couldn’t believe I was going for a jog in such a beautiful place. I took the train into Zurich for church and met two other Americans who had come for church, one who’s a choreographer from NYC who travels all over the world to do shows and another who’s an Au Pair in the French speaking part of Switzerland (Luzern is the German speaking part, well, Swiss German). She’s only 19 and has been her since March I believe, speaking just French! One of the couples had Sam and I (the au pair) over for lunch (delicious by the way) then Sam had to go but the mom, Nina, and I got to talk for 2 hours which was wonderful and helped me a lot.
That night I had been invited to join some other EF employees at a cookout on the amazing balcony we have here at the office. It was a very nice time and I was glad to meet a few more people. And this was not like hamburgers and things. Let me tell you, when international 20somthings have a cookout, they make nice food, and desserts. Yum.

So, it appears I’ve survived my first week in Luzern. Definitely full of many ups and downs but I feel I’m growing up a lot, which is not always fun but seems to be necessary. I promise no more play-by-plays of the week, I’ll be more brief about the day to day and save some room to describe the places I go. I just want you all to be able to experience things with me. Anyway, as always, I send you my love. You are all on my heart, and in my mind and prayers!

~Wildy

Week 1: PHOTOS! The Netherlands

I'm happy to say my camera connects beautifully to the computer so I will be able to post pictures each week along with my stories! Yahoo! Enjoy these.

The girls shopping in Den Haag.

The view we enjoyed while eating our lunch. A chicken sandwich that was a bit spicy, on a rustic triangular roll, with Dutch cheese, yum!

A typical Dutch street. You can't see in this photo but the houses along the canal have a hook above the top window. They use this to get things in because the doors are too small.

A cool looking building.

Visiting with Opa

The view from outside my families house.

Where we went running.

The Dutch 1/2 of my family! We had a lovely dinner in backyard the last night I stayed with them.