Aventure d'Annecy à Genève - en Vélo

So when we were in Autrans for the training, Flor, my new Argentine friend from the States, asked me if I wanted to bike to Geneva, Switzerland in the upcoming week.  I thought, 'haha sure that'd be crazy, but fun! if it even happens...' Here's the thing about Flor: she's legit.  She wants to do something like that and then sticks to it through the end! Here's the story:

As I described in plenty of detail in the last post, I came to Annecy on Friday the 21st of October, and then we were gonna leave for Geneva the following Monday.  Well, we did.  After getting everything we needed for the next couple days, we headed out!  We didn't get very far before we stopped for the first time.  Mostly because we needed a bike map to figure out where the heck we were going, because really we didn't know.  No one at the office de tourisme in Annecy could help us, so we went to get food for when we would stop for lunch.

After loading up Flor's bike basket with goodies, we started pedaling towards where we thought we were being pointed by bike signs in the city.  Turns out that was for a super hard route, as we discovered after we stopped and asked a guy on the side of the road for directions.  He pointed us towards another road, where we found some police on the side of the road and decided to ask them for help as well.  They gave us some more directions, and then we finally got a good ten minutes on the road...before we got stuck again.

iFound an apple in the street that
had fallen off a tree close by. so good.

Luckily, Flor, Adriana, and I were all wearing Argentina apparel, because this car driving past us saw the jerseys and pulled over to talk to the girls.  I don't speak Spanish, unfortunately, so I just sat there and smiled when they all laughed. They could've been making fun of me and I would've been laughing at myself.  Oh well!  Eventually they left and Flor clued me in:  they were immigrants from Argentina who hated the government, so they both moved to France and had been there for five years.  Woah.  Apparently we were headed in the right direction, but we needed to cross a bridge or we'd end up in the middle of nowhere.  Thank goodness for friendly neighbors!

We found the bridge, no signs attached, and continued on our way for another ten minutes.  Up until then we had been on two-lane, bike friendly roads. Now we came up on a really busy two-lane road that had nothing for a shoulder, but we saddled up and went for it anyway.  We hit the first of many ascents, but finally we knew where we were going, sort of.  We stumbled across a bike route sign and followed it the wrong way for a little while, talked with a post man who pointed us back to the right place, and found the sign we needed and followed that way instead.

It's funny, not far from where the sign pointed us we passed through Genéva!  It was literally a 25 second bike ride from the beginning of the little town to the exit sign.  Fun fact: I realized that's why "Geneva" in French is actually Genève, and not Genéva!

Anyway, we biked through a lot of little towns and villages like that, up and down hills, through little fields and meadows, and it's just impossible to show how beautiful it was.  Also, I didn't really take any pictures because I was biking the whole time!  Turns out the 7-speed was just about perfect.  I rode probably most of the trip in less than fifth gear because of all the climbs.  It was a great work out!

We stopped for lunch in this little town, Cercier, where the map showed a fork, one way going towards Geneva, the other back towards Annecy.  After we were well rested and filled, we took off to Geneva again.  Or so we thought.

I got ahead of the girls and came to this round about where nothing pointed towards any of the cities we were looking for on our bike map.  We had to flag down three different cars before we finally realized we had gone in the wrong direction about 20 minutes.  After backtracking to Cercier, we asked again for directions, and we found the right way.

P.S. Every time I say "we asked for directions," 95% of the time it was Flor.  I was always like, "come on, we'll figure it out on the way!" and then she would just ask the next person anyway, and most of the time she saved us from going the wrong way.  Turns out I'm awful with directions, and for some reason I feel like I'm bothering everyone by asking for directions, although, thanks to Flor, I'm pretty much over that by now.

longest bench in Europe!

So.  We rode downhill to this city, which was super nice until we had to bike back up.  It felt like a never-ending hill of death and despair.  I was standing up in first gear huffing and puffing, it was awful.  Finally we got to a flat part, and then we had to climb again.  After probably an hour of this, we finally got to go flat for a while.  We decided that, because it was starting to get late, that we would aim for a city, Vulbens, on the map that was only an hour or two from Geneva and then just stay the night there.

For 20€ per person, it was a pretty great deal.  Two full beds and then my bed, with a bathroom.  Plus we slept in until 11 the next morning and didn't leave until after noon.  That night we rode out maybe 10 minutes to the nearest grocery store and bought some stuffs for dinner and breakfast, and then we came back, ate and showered, and tucked ourselves in for the night.

entrance to the library in
Geneva! pretty sweet.

Like I said, we didn't leave till about noon the next day.  My legs were dead starting from the first pedal away from the hotel.  Unfortunately we still had a long aways ahead, so I bucked up and we continued on our journey.  We were in Switzerland not too long after we left Vulbens, but there wasn't really a welcome sign or anything.  It took us a flag in the yard of someone's house and several license plates to realize we had crossed borders.  No passport check, no visa scans, no nothing! Going country to country here is as smooth as a babies bottom.  Since I'm 21 now, can I still say that without sounding like a pedophile...?

The Swiss road to Geneva was so much easier to follow than it was in France,  we were there in no time!  The weather was nice for the first five minutes we were there, and then it started raining.  After a couple salami sandwiches in front of the tourist center (we needed maps of the city) Adriana and I split up from Flor so she could go to the UN and we could walk around and check out the sites in the older part of town.  There were a lot of things I wanted to take pictures of, but wasn't able to because of the blasted rain.  It's ok though, we're gonna do it again when the weather is warmer, so probably not until April!

 iThink we got there around 1:30, and it was raining all the way until like 5:30, which was when we met up at the UN to leave.  An hour later we had all walked to the nearest train station and gotten in line to ask about departure times to Annecy and to ask about our bikes. We figured out that there was a train that let's you bring your bikes on for free as long as there's space, but the station was a ways away and we needed to catch the next train at 7:30. We left in a hurry, because we weren't exactly sure how to get there and we didn't have a whole lot of time.

The rush out of the train station was a big mistake.  Flor and I lost Adriana.  One second I was waving to her from across the street, and the next she had disappeared behind a bus.  I went and looked for her, only to find two guys fighting over a handful of money and a bunch of scattered coins on the ground.

Adriana wasn't picking up her phone, but we decided that she was smart enough to use the map she had to get to the train station, so we would try to meet her there before the train left.  If not before the train came, obviously we would just wait there until she got there.

We got a text when we were right at the station that she had made it there, so we met her out front.  The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  The train we were looking for had already left, so we waited half an hour for the next one to show up, got on and connected at Aix-les-Bains towards Annecy.

The next morning, I packed everything and went into town with Flor to keep her company while she took care of some administrative stuff.  We ate at a McDonald's (second time), went further out of town, and eventually came back to meet Emily so they could talk to someone at Orange (the TV/phone/internet company).  I walked around an outdoors/sport store and saw a bunch of stuff I would've loved to buy, but for some reason making purchases is like a fine line between the decision between life and death for me.  So I walked out like 30 minutes later empty-handed.

Emily and Flor led me to the train station so I could buy a train pass and return my bike, and then I said bye to Flor and Emily and I walked around to look for something to drink.  We got a liter of fruit juice and sat in this nice park for a little while before we decided we were also hungry, so we got up and looked for an open restaurant.  Fun fact:  I would say most French restaurants and cafés don't serve lunch after like 1 p.m. It's crazy sauce! We found a sandwich place that was still open, so we ate there.  Why didn't I take a picture? No idea.  It was delicious.  I was probably too busy obsessing over the taste to think about my camera.

Emily hung out with me at the train station as I bought my ticket and waited for my train, and then we said goodbye and I got on board and headed to Lyon.  Just one transfer onto a bus and I was on my way back to Davézieux!  It was an amazing trip.  I can't wait to go back!  I'm currently in the works of planning a trip to Rome next week, but we'll see how that pans out...until then! Ciao Ciao!

Vacances en Annecy

Who loves to read a really, really long post about someone else's life?  Probably lots of people, as long as there are a million pictures to accompany said post.  In order to satisfy both those who enjoy long posts and those who do not, I've split this update into two parts: my trip to Annecy, and also my 80 kilometer biking adventure to Geneva, Switzerland.  The latter part will come later.  Please excuse the weak wordplay, I don't know how to be creative in French so I'm unleashing my pent up creativity on you...alas, here's the story of how I got to Annecy, and also what I did there:

i just...didn't know what to think...

Friday of last week, which would've been the 21st, I was planning on catching a bus out of Annonay to a train station at Le Péage de Roussillon, a small town just a couple minutes down the way, where I would ride the train to Lyon, and then to Annecy. Anyway, since I was also planning on biking to Switzerland I packed super light (two shirts and a pair of jeans, plus church clothes for six days).

I didn't wanna just sit around all day waiting for a bus out of town, so I made plans with Ashley to meet up in town for lunch and just to hang out before for a while before I left.  Well I couldn't take my bike with me, so I walked 45 minutes into town and we met at the bus station.  After we took care of some administrative business at her school we grabbed a bite to eat from a patisserie in the city center.  We both got a quiche and then I got this almond pastry and she got a raspberry one, everything was delicious. As you can tell by these pictures.

We picked up a letter from the postoffice and then she showed me her apartment.  It's really cozy inside and the view out her balcony was amazing! Something about making panoramas...I love it.  Doesn't quite do it justice though.

Anyway, we were still hungry, plus we walked all over the place so don't judge us but we went and got another something to eat on my way back to the bus station. I got a crab sandwich and she got a croque monsieur, both which were good but a little too much mayo in mine and a little too much bechamel sauce in hers.  Still, a disappointment here is like heaven back home.

I got on the bus and made it to the train station with like 5 minutes to spare.  I tried to buy a train pass but the train got there in the middle of the transaction, which is unfortunate because I could've saved like 30€.  I made it to Lyon 20 minutes before my next train left to Annecy, but I still needed to get a ticket.  I went to the ticket office, which was jam packed with people, but found a small line of maybe four people in front of a ticket machine.  I wondered why the line was so short when there was another line of probably 30 people in line to buy tickets from a real person.

 I figured out why when the first person took 10 minutes to buy a ticket from the machine.  I literally watched a guy get in the big line and go all the way through and come out with a ticket as I stood behind three people.  I also watched the clock tick closer to my departure time.  Fifteen minutes. Ten. Seven. Four. Then there was only a guy in front of me, who restarted his search four times, and THEN froze the machine (no joke) and left the line. I stood there in disbelief until divine intervention made the machine work again.

I bought my ticket with maybe 45 seconds to spare, ran to my platform and jumped on the side of the train as it was rolling away.  We were well out of the station before I finally pried the doors open and stumbled inside as the passengers looked at me like I was crazy.  Ok, it wasn't that dramatic.  I did run to the platform, but I got on normal-style and the train left like two minutes later.

I watched three or four people get on the train, realize it was the wrong one and get off.  Unfortunately, two girls were not so lucky.  They got on the train as it was leaving and then they found out it was the wrong one.  Poor souls...I had peaceful ride though, and when I arrived in Annecy I called the president of the branch there because we had arranged for him to pick me up.  He was super nice, but he didn't know of anywhere I could stay (I didn't ask why I couldn't just stay with him) so he took me to a hotel. I paid 45€ to sleep in a big bed for six hours.  But it was nice!

At six the next morning the president came back and took me to the church building, where we met up with some other members to carpool to the Bern, Switzerland temple.  Among them were my friends Flor and Emily!  They're in the same program as me and teach in Annecy.  We carpooled to the temple and I got to talk to the other man who came with us, he was awesome. It was cold in Bern, but the sun was shining and the temple was beautiful.

Afterwards, we all went to McDonald's.  It was actually the first time I've been there since I got to France, which I was pretty proud of.  Culture observation:  in Switzerland they have three national languages: French, Italian, and German.  I guess as kids grow up they just learn the language of their parents, and then in school I think they just learn the language of the country closest to them.  I don't really know.  The point is that the girl behind the cash register spoke German, but the girl next to her spoke both German and French, and there was another guy who worked there who spoke German, and it was just cool. The food was so good, of course. I got this big chicken wrap and a raspberry frappé thing. Again: So. Good.

We met up with people back at the temple and left for home.  When we got back to Annecy, Flor, Emily and I walked around looking for something to eat.  We stopped at this pizza place and ordered the most delicious pizzas I've ever had...in France.  They tasted as good as they look.  One was a three meat combo and the other was some Haute-Savoie (the department I was in, remember Ardèche, my department?) specialty, a creme based pizza with potatoes and other stuff.

After pizza I rented a bike from the train station, a 7-speed that I prayed would make it to Geneva and back.  We rode back to their apartment, taking the scenic route alongside the lake.  It is so beautiful there, I can't even describe and pictures will never explain it in full, no matter how many thousands of words they're worth.  If I were to show you a picture though, it would be another sweet panoramic I took.

The view out their apartment is breathtaking, here's an attempt to capture it.

The next morning we all went to church, and it was so great.  It's such a different experience being in France, but the Spirit was just as strong and I loved it.  We took the same route there and back as we did the day before, but on Sundays there's this ginormous open market for a couple hours in the morning and we rode right through it. It was so busy in the morning, but I only thought to take a video on the way back as things were dying down, which won't load for some reason so I'll have to show you it in person!

We got back to the apartment and ate this really good Argentine dish that Flor made while we waited for her friend Adriana to arrive from Montélimar for the bike trip the next day.  That night Flor, Adriana, and I planned our route to Geneva.  It would be full of epic failures and wins, for sure, but in the end we...well I guess you'll just have to read about it in the next post! :)

Stage à Grenoble et Autrans

i said i was gonna make some of my mom's
cookies, and i did. they. are. delicious.

LONG POST AHEAD. YOU MIGHT WANT SOME COOKIES FOR THE WAY.

I've been without internet since Sunday evening.  It's been awful!  Also it's been wonderful.  Thankfully I was so busy the whole time that I think even if I had internet access I wouldn't have been on at all. Ok...who am I kidding, I probably would have at some point. I'm an addict. There, ARE YOU HAPPY?! Anyway...here's the story:

Remember that awesome party I was at? Well I got in contact with Morgane, the girl who I met there who told me I could crash at her place Sunday night if I wanted, and her offer was still on the table!  So Isabelle helped me find a ride down to Grenoble there using this site that serves as a ride share throughout the country.

at night, this tower turns on its BLUE
lights! it looks so cool, but I never
managed to get a picture of it, sorry! 

I met Rémy - a twenty-something year old guy who works in Grenoble during the week and comes to the Annonay region to visit his family on the weekends - in Davézieux and he brought me all the way to my friend's place in Grenoble for only 8€, a trip that would normally have costed like 20€ and lots of stress.  He was a really cool guy. We talked about a lot of stuff on the way down, and then he helped me find the tram I needed to take.  I got his phone number in case I'm ever in Grenoble again, and then we shook hands and said goodbye.

I was waiting at the tram for like 15 minutes before my friend showed up, and then we rode it to at stop that's right in front of her apartment building.  Her roommates were really welcoming.  One guy was Spanish and the other guy was Bulgarian I think, and they hooked me up with a blow up mattress and blankets and stuff.  Morgane made me and her a spinach pie thing with goat cheese - SO good.  Then we ate pasta, and we ate cheese and bread and chocolate for dessert.  She's so nice!  They're all students at the university in Grenoble, and she had to be up around 8 and I had to be up around 9 so we both went to bed pretty early.

I woke up the next morning, folded up my mattress and blankets and stuff, wrote Morgane a quick thank you not on a paper towel, and headed out towards my rendez-vous point for the Académie.  I didn't have time to eat breakfast, so I just hopped on the tram (which I didn't know you were supposed to pay for until after I got off and saw the ticket machine) and rode it down to where Morgane told me to get off.  Except I got off a stop too early so I had to walk to the next stop to make my transfer to where the building we were meeting in was.

I had a few minutes before we were officially supposed to start, so I went out looking for food.  I found a supermarket about 29 steps from the tram stop, and because my middle name is Othello I couldn't decide what I wanted to eat for about 10 minutes.  I settled with about a pound of white grapes which have green skins, but are named white because the wine they make is whine, even though it's more of a golden color than anything, and anyway it only cost me like 60 cents. Supply and demand, eh?  The same amount of grapes would've cost me my right hand.  I didn't steal them...we don't live in the Middle Ages, I just mean they'd be expensive.  In case you were confused.

So I brought my green-skinned white grapes back to the meeting place, signed off on my name at a table of English teaching assistants, and checked out where my room would be for the night.  Bellcombe 4, in a room with three other girls. Turns out that my advisor, Jean-Noël, placed me in that room because he thought that I was a girl because my name is Casey.  I don't know how he decided that, but what else is new.  I hoped they wouldn't be too freaked out.

I was just standing around with like 250 other kids in this room while everyone else showed up and signed in when I saw Holly.  A friendly face!  We mingled with some of the other assistants, and I saw some of the others from the Ardèche region (are you starting to remember these names?!).  We met a handful of other people while we were waiting to go into the auditorium.  I ended up sitting in the auditorium with some LDS kids (HOORAY!) I had met on Facebook, and some other girls who they had met before.

We sat through this really long and really boring informational meeting about stuff that everybody already knew.  They let all those who were in the European Union out to lunch so the others could stay and ask questions about financial stuff.  Since I had already taken care of everything like that I decided to opt out of that session with my new friends Trevor and Ashley to go get lunch.  We had an hour and a half to kill, so we walked down a ways to this boulangerie in search of food.  I got a salmon quiche, a diet coke and a strawberry tarte, which I forgot to take a picture of because I was so excited to eat it :(

salmon quiche. try the next time you're in grenoble.

The quiche was to die for.  Anything that comes out of your every day, every couple shops down bakery is amazing.  Even the coca-light tasted like diet coke.  I mean, it was diet coke, but sometimes people thing they'd taste different. Nope. Tasted like America.  Look at your hand. Now close your eyes.  Now imagine you have succulent strawberries and crème de la crème sliding down your pallet as you chew on a soft, cookie-esque crust.  Now stop. Close your mouth and open your eyes.  Look back at your hand.  Sadly, you're not actually eating a strawberry tarte, but if you were in France you could have been like me and actually had that experience.  I'm on a couch writing my blog - hooah!

...

We went back to the auditorium for a couple more hours of boring stuff.  This one guy from Spain or Italy stood up and addressed the people who were speaking to us and was like (in French, and not as sarcastically) "Hey just wanted to say thank you for everything, but a few of us were confused because we got a paper that said we were required to come here, but that everything would be free.  Well we had to pay for our train tickets here and then we just had to go out and buy lunch, so we were kindof upset about that." I think the majority of people were pretty shocked, but also it was kindof true.  I got lucky with my ride down, but some people had to pay like 40€ to get down to Grenoble.  I still that it was a little rude, but I also see why he was upset.  Even then, I wouldn't have had the cahones to address these people who were hosting us for the night in front of over 250 people.

After all that, I didn't really walk away from that with anything, except for new friends and a sweet page of doodles.  The six or seven us headed out of the auditorium to the busses that would take us up to Autrans, the little resort town where we were having our training the next day.  The drive up took like 45 minutes, but it was beautiful.  I hated the windows of the bus because they made taking pictures a pain in the beezy.  I wanted to stop the driver every 5 minutes so he could let me out so I could take pictures outside.  Too bad I never act on those impulses.  I'm only impulsive when I want something of little to no value on the internet. It's easy for me to spend my money when I can't see it in my hand.

Anyway...we arrived and checked in to our rooms and had a couple hours before we needed to be back for dinner.  I met the three other girls in my room, one who I already knew from Ardèche, and they weren't weirded out and neither was I!  I guess there were a couple rooms that were co-ed, too.  So Trevor, Ashley, Mia and I split up from the rest of the group and went looking for a hiking trail.  We didn't really find one, so we just climbed up the nearest hill until we had a good view of the town and then we headed back down.

We met up with the other kids we met and sat a table of eight in this big mess hall.  Dinner was bread (obvi) and salad followed by rice and green beans with rolled up fish in this really tasty sauce that I couldn't identify any part of.  It was white and salty.  Does that help?  I didn't think so. For dessert we ate yogurt and grapes.

Our little group met back in a room to play this card game called phase 10.  Before I joined them I ran into an assistant who also lives in Annonay! She teaches in the high school that Anouk goes to, which is why I had never met her.  It would've been great to know there was someone else in my city my age before though, like on my birthday when I walked around in the rain by myself. #selfpity

Her name is Ashley and she's from England as well.  She's way cool!  I guess she goes down to hang out with some of the assistants in Valence on weekends, so hopefully I'll be able to tag along sometime.

After a couple hours of phase 10, we figuratively threw in the towel and went back to our rooms for the night.  The other girls were already asleep when I got in, so I just went straight to bed.  Not straight to sleep, however, because the people next door thought it'd be cool to stay up drinking until all hours of the morn. I think they were the ones who skipped breakfast.

Which, unfortunately, they didn't really miss out on.  They had plenty of bread cut up, and even had corn flakes out accompanied by hot milk.  Here's the thing.  Hot milk + corn flakes = salty mess of not good.  Of course, they took out the cold milk after I already ate a bowl, so I wasn't really feeling another one.  I had a couple slices of bread and butter and what I think was raspberry jam.

Everybody split up into elementary school and middle-high school, and then split up again according to departments.  Along with the other Ardèche people I met in Privas, I went to a room where we met up with the head over the department Drôme, Rosine; the assistants in the region, and Jean-Noël, the head over my department.  We went through like four hours of different workshops on how to better teach the students.  It was fun and repetitive at the same time.

Between the hours of workshops we went to lunch.  I lost a lot of my group, so I ended up sitting with some random people and one girl from my group, but we had a good time!  We ate chicken in a curry sauce with a salad and steamed carrots and potatoes. There were little yogurt cups and cheese for dessert.

After lunch the directeur had everybody sit on the steps of the welcome building for a picture and then then thanked us for being awesome, and then mentioned that there was a bus leaving early for those who lived in Ardèche, which meant me! Hooray!  My friend Stephanie had already bought a train ticket back, but she lives close to Jean-Noël so he just let her ride with him (he's just a swell guy, I'm telling you), so she gave me her train ticket! So many nice people here.  I caught the first bus out of camp, got to the train station and followed Holly, my friend Beccy, who teaches in Tournon (near Valence, about 20 minutes away), and my friend Ashley from Montana (who teaches in a tiny town WAY away from everyone else, I feel real bad for her) to our next train, which had about 3 minutes to catch.

Frodo must be on another adventure, because he didn't
answer the door...

Stephanie's ticket was for 8:30, but it was like 5 so I needed to exchange my ticket.  I had to pay 3€ to have it moved up a couple hours, but I thought that was still a pretty good deal for a ticket home!  Well we barely caught the train because I was taking forever, but finally we were on.  When the conductor was taking my ticket, he asked for my train card that I used to buy the ticket.  Well I didn't buy the ticket, Stephanie did, so I didn't have it...so I ended up having to pay him seven more euros.  But still, 10€ for a train ticket wasn't too bad.

We said goodbye to Ashley in Valence, and then Holly, Beccy and I headed off to our next train, which I still needed to buy my ticket for.  I couldn't use my debit card in the machines in the station because it's a different set up, so Beccy had to buy my ticket and then I had to pay her with cash.  We barely made that train too!  Holly and I said bye to Beccy at her stop, and then the two of us headed to Péage de Roussillon to catch a bus to Félines, where Isabelle would pick us up.  The bus driver in Péage was waiting on a train to get in, which was late, so we left about ten minutes later than we had expected.

Funny story.  On the way to Félines, we talked a little bit with this Catholic guy who got on the bus and sat in front of us.  He needed to use my phone, but because I only had like a minute's worth of credit left on my card I told him sorry but I needed it to talk with Isabelle.  So Holly let him use hers, and he was on the phone saying that it was Brother Somethingoranother, and so when he was off the phone I just asked him what religion he was, in the small chance that maybe he was LDS.  He said he Catholic, and then invited us to something that was happening the next day in this church that is supposed to be really pretty and one of three of its kind.

Well anyway Holly and I got to talking about religion a little bit, and I was starting to explain about being LDS as we were getting off the bus when I realized I had left my phone on board.  The bus was long gone.  So we were gonna call Holly's host mom, but then Holly's phone died.  So we went looking for a payphone, but you need a specific card to call with it.  We didn't know if we were in the right spot, or when Isabelle would get there, and suddenly everything that we thought could've gone wrong might go wrong.  We freaked out a little bit, but then 15 minutes later or so Isabelle rolled up and took us all home.

After we dropped off Holly we went to check the bus station to see if the bus would be there, but it wasn't, so we just went home.  We were planning on coming back the next morning, but then Isabelle got a call from my phone, from the bus driver! He found it, and happened to call the right person.  He had just called her and gotten across where we should meet tomorrow and at what time when the phone he hung up on Isabelle for some reason...I know it was because the phone was out of credit, because when I got it back today I had a text that said "you ran out of credit!"  Good thing I didn't give it to the nice man on the bus!

Holy cow, if you're still reading this...I appreciate it.  Maybe you just came for the pictures.  That's ok, too.

if it looks like i photoshopped a lightpost out of this...it's
because i did.

Today it rained, but I went and picked up my bank card and came home and bought a new phone plan that will allow me to use my phone from America, so I'll have unlimited internet and texts, and 2 hours of call time for only 20€ a month! It's pretty sweet. I also bought Skyrim.  11.11.11. Why aren't you here now?!

I'm trying to figure out what to do for the next two weeks, because it's all saints vacation.  Italy?  Switzerland? I guess you'll find out in the next post!