First Night Out and Assorted First Week info

Saturday 14 Feb

A quick rundown on what’s happened since Wednesday. So Thursday was my first day in Switzerland with snow. It was absolutely beautiful. The one thing I do love about this country is how picturesque it is. I went down to the lake by the uni and watched snowflakes float onto the water, there’s nothing like it. Granted I did this because I have no friends and am all by my lonesome self but it does lessen the homesickness just a little. I finished up everything that needed doing on Thursday morning, so had the bank account opened, the residence permit done and money all sorted. I bumped into Kelly and ended up going home with her. The lucky thing is she lives just next door; I’ve been popping in and out alot over the past week. It’s strange that it’s only been a week, feels like I’ve been gone for months. I spent the afternoon at Kelly’s, leeching and hanging all at the same time and then went home to Harry Potter. Made my first dinner that night, spaghetti and Bolognese/tuna instead of mince. Mince is not affordable. Actually turned out really good! Ate with my housemate Jonas who I’m beginning to think look more and more like Ian Thorpe. One day when I finally get around to taking photos, you’ll see... on different angles and when he makes certain facial expression, I swear it’s like talking to Ian Thorpe! He’s an awesome guy and really nice, lent me my blanket and pillow and currently, the laptop charger that I’m using cause I have no adaptor -_-
We just chilled the entire night and talked about alot of funny crap, then went on youtube to look up more funny stuff; thank God I’ve actually managed to make friends with the guys I’m living with!
Friday was orientation day. Magnus, the German guy I met on the first day here gave me a buzz so we ended up going to the orientation together. Orientation was good, I met a whole bunch of people, did my ‘prey on those with no friends’ trick that I love to do. Bumped into Alison the American girl I met on Wednesday as well. Afterwards, we all went for coffee, me, Magnus, Alison, her American friend Krista and Magnus’s roommate Tracy. A bunch of French Canadian girls I met during orientation had invited me out that night so I recruited the rest to meet at 9.30 that night before we parted ways and I went home to get ready for dinner with Julie, Julz’s Swiss friend.

Now Julie is fantastic! We had Mexican for dinner and she was so easy to get along with. For some reason I had the idea I was going to be meeting a replica of Julz but the two are definitely different; they do however share one thing in common. They’re both so genuinely and sincerely nice that it’s almost impossible to not love them straight up. Julie and I ended up speaking in French the entire time and somehow I managed; surprise of the century. We were suppose to go out together afterwards but ended up separating; I went off with the Canadians and a whole bunch of other exchange kids and she went to her friend’s place. We foreigners marched ourselves to a bar called Darling. I forgot how much Swiss clubs suck. Everybody smokes, so by the end of the night, you completely reek of cigarette smoke. The music’s terrible, they keep playing random songs...and the Swiss don’t dance. They just all stand on the dance floor and maybe bop their heads; me and Allison were not impressed. We needed to get the hip hop on. We ended up leaving around 1 but unfortunately we’d missed the last metro home so we had to go catch the pyjama buses: the nightlink equivalent. As fortune favours me, it seems I’m the only person whose residence is not visited by the pyjama bus. It goes everywhere... except where I live. There was no way for me to get home and I’d already turned down 2 offers of crashing on the couch, so I thought I’d take the bus with the Canadians back to their dorm and walk back to mine which was about 25mins. Then I realised I’ve only been in the country for 4 days! I don’t know how to recognise streets. I was sure that my frozen body would be found in the morning. Luckily, a guy from Paris got on the bus and needed to go my metro station so we ended up asking him for help and he agreed he’d take me to the place. When we got off the bus, we were about 20 mins by walking from where I lived. And did we walk! It was about -5 degrees and for half the time we walked alongside fields with animals...So kind of like the country. I felt like refugees escaping through the country s. Maybe not worth going clubbing in winter! I got home around 3 am, crawled into bed and slept the day away.

Got up and caught a train out to Renens where Julie picked me up with her dad and took me grocery shopping. Good old Aldi! When I went in and saw the prices of mince, I openly wept – perhaps not so badly. It was 5 bucks! I could actually afford meat again. Everything in Aldi is actually affordable... I may be able to see chicken again during my year in Switzerland. It was an occasion to celebrate!

As soon as I got home, I popped around to Kelly’s to celebrate the finding of a place where we can buy cheap meat! Hanged out there for the arvo then had Magnus and Alison over for dinner and drinks. The 3 of us are becoming a little trio, we generally do everything together. So a quick down on these new people in my life: I find Allison to be your typical American girl next door; she begs to differ. She’s got a boyfriend back home in Michigan, Ann Arbor and she’s really nice. Magnus is a hoot! Haha. It’s difficult to actually describe these people so I’m going to give up J We just ate together and then drank half a bottle of vodka whilst discussing intellectual things... maybe not.