Meeting More Americans!

Tuesday 17th Feb

I’m watching the snow fall! It’s not as exciting as the first day and it’s getting to be a little bit of a hindrance. It’s extra cold outside, the ground turns to slush and your hair gets soaked... but still beautiful. I’ve just got back from my first real class and am in the process of making lunch; or putting a frozen pizza in the oven and waiting for it to cook (and it burnt L, I forgot to turn the temperature from the preheat temperature! Damn all you Australians!)
Uni started yesterday and I was up bright and early at 8 in the morning. Went to a language interview at 9 to assess what classes I can take; I get to take any class I want in my faculty J
After the interview me and Allison went into town and just walked around a bit. Did the tourist thing. A guy approached us and asked for money, he gave us a little paper saying he had to support 2 kids and don’t have anything to eat etc so I gave him all the coins I had on me. As soon as he saw we weren’t going to give him big money, he got quite rude and walked off. I had the strong suspicion that he was probably faking because later we saw him and a bunch of other guys walking around asking other people... not to be a dick but they looked like a bunch of druggies. Plus... are there homeless people in Switzerland?

We headed back to uni around 1 to meet Magnus for lunch but half way there he called and said he was in town getting his residence permit, so we had to hop off and go back. That’s the one great thing about Switzerland. Amazing public transport. Trains come every 5 minutes and they’re always on time and since I have a monthly ticket for the cheap price of 41CHF, I ride that train back and forth 10 times a day. We ended up eating in town which turned out not to be too expensive because we got a student discount. After lunch, Magnus dropped us of at Allison’s (in his car!) and went back to his to do stuff for his permit. Me and Allison went grocery shopping and then headed into uni for our first real class; Swiss French Literature. Very boring. We ended up drawing maps all class and locating our home towns on our very well drawn little atlas. I’m not going to take the class and neither is Allison. The course here is really flexible, we can basically take any class we want, so the next 2 weeks we get to just drop in and out and see which ones we particularly like. Swiss literature is definitely a no go. The good thing that came out of the class is we met another American girl named Rachel and ended up going back to her place with Allison for dinner. Magnus dropped over after dinner; for some reason he won’t come during dinner, it’s almost like he doesn’t trust me and Allison to cook so he’s always got to eat at home (he can’t cook either). Now he’s a funny fella and the best way me and Allison could describe him was as a douche. Every time we see him he tells us the 30 new French words that he’s revised that day but then 10 minutes later he’s talking about how to chat up girls. He is definitely a European douche that’s nonetheless hilarious. The four of us just spent the night talking, discussing why capsicum should not be called peppers and why Australian accents are not funny and therefore should not be laughed at. I’ve found that Americans have a hard time understanding me. Don’t anyone dare try to say it’s cause of an Asian accent. But the first couple days with Allison, everything I said she asked me to repeat because she couldn’t understand what I was saying. Now it’s all good. But with Rachel, the same thing happened. I’d say something and she’d ask me to repeat, except now Allison will jump in and say, he said... It’s like I speak a foreign language!

Onto today (Tuesday). Had 3 classes today. The first 2 were pretty boring. French language and French phonetics. I feel like I’m doing Speech pathology and realised how boring the girls’ classes back in Aus must have been. I basically tried to sleep through the first two. The 3rd and last class of the day was French Linguistics. It was at 5 at night and it went for 2 hours so I’d already made up an excuse and told the teach I had to leave an hour early; I just wanted to check out the class first. Surprising thing was I actually stayed for the whole thing because it was pretty cool. Also spoke to a couple of the exchange girls I’d met randomly. Party tomorrow night at one of their houses and it is suppose to be big so organised to eat with Allison at hers since she lives in the same complex.

Came home and made my signature dish, vegies and tuna blend. I know that doesn’t sound appetising but it’s actually surprisingly good with some mashed potatoes. Yes... I can cook. Did my laundry tonight with Jonas’ help but I screwed someone else’s laundry up. The way our system works is you pay with a prepaid laundry card. When you begin the wash, it charges you 5CHF and when you finish, you’re suppose to put your card back into the machine and it’ll refund you 3 CHF; making it 2 bucks to wash cloth. Don’t ask why they don’t just charge 2 bucks straight up. Anyway, I put my clothes in and went upstairs to make dinner cause it took about an hour to wash. I went back downstairs a bit late and someone had already taken my clothes out and put theirs in. This means I don’t get my 3CHF back. When I got back upstairs, Jonas told me I should just try to see if I can still get the money back so I tried. I got the money back but the other guy’s washing stopped midway. I think I ended up taking his 3CHF that he was meant to get after he finished. Felt kind of guilty but it’s a dog eat dog world in Switzerland. Happy day kids. It won’t stop snowing.