Week Three

I don't have many pictures this week, I will try to take more this coming week. I keep forgetting to bring the camera. So this post is mostly just random things about Switzerland and then random aspects of my life here.

The floor levels often have negative numbers, even though all the floors are above ground. For instance at the mall the floors are -2, -1, 0, 1, 2. I don't know how they decide to define 0.

There are zero signs of Halloween around, but they did have a small selection of pumpkins in the market, so I got one. It was five dollars for this little one, so I got my full use out of it, I gave it three faces. The family thought it was fun to see a pumpkin carved. We did have a few children come by the flat trick-or-treating, some dressed up, some not.








The "F" word is written around a lot. Which I think is kind of funny. I wouldn't care or know if people were writing French swear words around America.

The parks are awesome. A few we have been to have 50ft long zip-lines, which the children love.

The food has been wonderful! Some examples of things we have are freshly cut tomatoes, cucumbers or avocado lightly tossed with olive oil. For salad dressings we often just have oil, balsamic vinegar and freshly ground pepper. I have now had the traditional Swiss meal of foudue, very good but very rich and heavy. Last night we had another traditional meal of racquette(spelling?), it is a type of cheese that you melt and then pour over boiled potatoes. Very good.

They don't have clothing dryers here, they didn't in Japan either. Here we have a wash room for the whole complex, in the wash room there are lines to hang the clothing and a large fan to turn on to dry them. In Japan people just had small racks that they set outside, or left in a room of the house overnight.

I went to McDonald's on Friday with a group from Institute. McDonald's is the only American restaurant I have seen. I hear there are a few others around Europe. They don't really have fast food here. Anyway McDonald's, very expensive, someone said they heard it was the most expensive in the world and I believe it. It cost around 12 Swiss francs for a combo meal. Japan cost a dollar or two more than America, but not double or triple!

The money, CHF or Swiss franc is very close in value to the American dollar so that is very nice. CH is the abbreviation for Switzerland, but I have not figured out why. Like Japan all the currency under $10 is in coin form. The coins I have seen thus far are 10cent, 20cent, 1/2 franc, 1 frank, 2 frank, and 5 franc.

Today I rode the Fenicular railway for the first time. Not too exciting, just a short little railway that goes up the mountain. I think it is very common throughout Europe. We just rode up and spent about an hour walking around on the mountain roads. The railway is very close by, just in the city. We did see cows, which we have also seen on our other trips to mountain areas. The cows actually have cow bells around their necks. I don't think I have ever seen that in the US. It is kind of noisy with a whole field of cows.

Church has been great! At first I thought that would be the most difficult part of living here, sitting for 3 hours listening to something you don't understand. But people have been so nice and friendly, and many speak at least a little English. I have an American friend named Abby, she is here from Utah studying French at Neuchatel University. There are a good number of singles here, and most the guys speak English from their missions. Not because they went to an English speaking place but because their companions were mostly American. One of these guys named Lorenzo, Italian hence the very Italian name, was very nice and translated the meetings for me. In Relief Society I met another Italian woman who spoke English very well from her mission, in Italy. I also meet this nice stay at home mom, named Annie, with two children, so we are going to meet at the park this week! I am excited, I don't know anything about her, but she speaks English! I go to the park, different parks every day (there are a lot here), every afternoon with the children so it will be fun to have someone to meet with. There is this really nice grandma here who doesn't speak a word of English, but always makes sure to find English speakers to introduce me to and for me to sit by. She walked me home my first week, and sat by me when I was waiting for the meeting to start. So nice.