Italy, Portugal and Bratwurst

For the first time since cheering with 1. FC Koeln I attended a European football match. It was also my first time actually sitting with the fans. I always remember looking at them standing and cheering and waving their flags. On this night I was one of them; sloshing beer in conversation and gesturing with bratwurst in fist. It was a mild night outside but I was pretty chilly with all those fans around me and all. Ok, it had been a long time since I had sat out in the rain and didn't mind. I guess I was too busy watching Ronaldo's orange shoes to care.

Winter hiking in Zurich

Vancouver

Cheese

It is nearly February, and in reflection of the holidays, I just realised that many pictures I have of the season are very silly. These pictures are so embarrassing! But at the same time as being embarrassing, they offer some of the most genuine moments. It was so nice to catch up, relax, and be silly again with my family and friends in Vancouver. I miss them!

Tsawwassen Beach

After being welcomed to Vancouver by the chilly air and a couple of cold noses, my Dad and Shauna took me out 'windersurfer watching' to put it into perspective. The scattered driftwood, salty air, eagles circling above, looming clouds... all this tells me I am back.

Mistaken identity

Warning: the sole purpose of this blog as been recognized as being award-winningly superficial. I have never had a twin before, so I am obviously excited about even the slighted claimed resemblance. Lately, these two have come up as potentials. Kris and I walked by each other at our first faculty meeting at ZIS, did double takes, stopped, went back, started talking about how weird it was that we kind of looked alike, and became friends. The other picture is a random person from the internet. A student said he found 'me' on a private girls school website in Philadelphia. The big debate now stands as: Who looks more like the private school student? Kris or me? I leave it up to the scrutiny of the public.

The Holiday Season

Playing soccer on that cooshy articifial turf in Zug beats urban soccer, on leaves in Wollishofen park, hands down; like running on a huge piece of what is already inside of a shoe sole.

Other than this, my job is keeping me busy these days during the weekdays and nights, and my friends are keeping me up late on the weekends. We just had school auditions for this year's musical, The Music Man, and I, on vocal auditions, admittedly pondered the similarities between the three of us judges and the American Idol celebrity panel. I would definitely be Paula Abdul. In the end, we have 40 students participating. It is going to be crazy fun dancing and singing everyday afterschool. The Duke of Edinburgh Award is also underway, which means for me getting all 17 high schoolers organized and ready to go on three overnight camps in the spring. They are for the most part self-sufficient, so I am mostly a facilitator. Working with the teenagers is sure a reality check compared to the Grade 6's. See, I had so many cool teachers in elementary school and then... shockingly, all of my grade 8, 9 and 10 teachers were totally and completely, without a doubt, not cool.


Two weeks ago, we had a huge Thanksgiving feast amoung friends which ended in a large, tournament style poker game; lasting way into the night. Accused of using a, "I'm new! What do I do if I have two Aces? Is that good?" tactic, I ended up coming second and getting half the pot, but I size it up to endurance more than anything. In the Thanksgiving spirit, I ran a 3k race (entusiastically pictured below... must have been near the beginning), the Turkey Trot, and yes, my competition were all under 12 years old. Who cares? haha

Last weekend, I was presently surprised by my friends here because of the disgusting fashion they came through with for my holiday bad sweater party. It was sick. I even had a physical reaction to Stefan's furry, peach, stretched out, polyester-lined atrocity. Literally it shook my esophagus. Fantastic.


Life is good! I am going back to Vancouver in a week and a half for the Christmas holidays. I'm excited to see my family and old friends. Oh, and, thanks to reconnecting with old buds on Facebook, I may actually have some visitors over soon.

People say if you look too long it hurts.

November begins with football practice

Autumn Stimmung

Because Sundays in Switzerland are still protected as a day of rest, Kari, Devon and I got out for a walk along the coast. I think at first it is easy to call it frustrating that nothing is open on Sundays, calling it constricting or a consumer lock down if you will. But once the shoes are on and some other way to enjoy the day has been found, that frustration morps unsuspectingly into appreciation. So thank you Switzerland for giving me this walk in the park today with my friends.

Blair Swiss Project

An orientation video at night. What a wacky idea. A video for mom and dad. But the cows were crazy ding-a-linging!

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Transformation!

I started working full time two days after arriving into this extremely empty apartment. But trust me, many of those spare minutes in between then and now have been spent searching second-hand shops for antiques, organizing vehicles, finding free stuff, and dreaming the big 'Trading Spaces' dreams. It's starting to feel cozy but oddy enough I still find myself always sitting on the floor.

Skating at Burkliplatz

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to be part of Facebook and so far it seems like it was a good decision. My main reasons being a) curiousity and b) the chance that maybe it would result in someone coming to visit me here. However, now I am all confused between posting pictures here and posting in albums on Facebook. Truth is mom and dad don't have Facebook, so I can't possibly stop the blog. It's an online community pickle that I don't know the answer to just yet.

October Break

A friend of mine, Charlie, came over from England to enjoy our 'coincidently coinciding' vacations. We explored Zurich and the little villages around it and generally just had a lot of laughs and cooked a lot of food.

We spent two days hiking in the mountains near Interlaken; this was the chalet we stayed overnight in (above left), basically we played some cards and shivered into the night. It was worth it if not only to see the sunrise over the snow the next morning (below left). We spent a lot of time staring out at the valley feeling refreshingly humbled by its massivity. This is also Charlie contempating our path down... I think this picture was taken just moments before noticing the intercepting sheer cliff and having to backtrack. Better to have explored the path than be kept in wonder; wise words that stem far deeper than this days hike I say.
I am going to start writing comments to go along with the pictures I post again... a novel idea really.

Trift Glacier

At the time, we just did it, but now looking back... this hike was intense!! Thank you Switzerland.