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!