"But if the best is for the best..."

"...I guess the best is to blame."

Today's blog has a slightly melancholy beginning, a stunning middle (not really), and a happy ending.  I just thought I would let you know in case you wanted to skip to a certain emotion.

Melancholy Beginning:
Well, really it was the ending that was melancholy.  Last Saturday was my last day in Switzerland.  Because our program is only an accredited university in the states, and not in Switzerland, we didn't get student visas, so we had to leave the Schengen Zone after 90 days.  I knew this going into the program and was excited for our Croatian adventure at the end of the program, but it felt too soon.

It was really hard for me to leave.  It's been an incredible dream to live in between the Alps and the Jura, to look over Lac Leman every day on the way to the city, and to walk home alongside vineyards.  Switzerland has burrowed so deeply into my heart that it was such a struggle to get on that train with all of my bags and leave.

It was also really hard to say goodbye to my host family.  In fact, it was much  more so than I thought it would be.  I always consider myself a tough girl,  but I became a big mush-ball when my siblings came into my room one by one to say goodbye to me and wish me luck in the next stage of my life.  It's so strange to have watched them grow over the course of the months and to feel a part of their successes and failures, and to know that it is over now.  It feels very abrupt.  It was especially hard to say goodbye to my host mom.  She brought me to the train station very early in the morning and stood with me on the platform in the cold.  She kept reiterating how much she would miss me, what a great semester it had been, and how I was always welcome back at their house.  If I hadn't been so sleepy I probably would have been bawling.  I tried my best to convey my gratitude in my limited French...I hope she understands what she has meant to me.

Stunning Middle:
We traveled for 13 hours by train out of Geneva.  You would think that our directors would have booked us a plane instead of a train, but no.  That would be too easy.  As it was, we utilized every nook and cranny we found in the train to shove all of our luggage on (28 people x 3 months worth of stuff?  MAYHEM.).  It was a huge hassle getting everything on, but on our transfer we organized ourselves (and by we, I mean the students.  The directors are useless.) and managed to get everyone plus all the baggage off the train in 1.5 minutes.  It was quite a feat.

This is about half of the stuff from our group.  It was absolute mayhem.

The first few days in Croatia were spent in self-imposed lock down.  Our big papers were due the day before Thanksgiving, so everyone was sprawled out throughout the hotel, typing as fast as possible.  In the end, we all triumphed!  My paper was 48 pages, 30 of which were body text.  It was rough at the end, but I'm happy with what I completed.  I have my 30 minute presentation on Wednesday, and then I am officially done with classes for the semester!  Not a bad life.

Happy ending:
Since completing the paper, we have spent the past few days celebrating and exploring Pula.  It's a very pretty place that feels much different than anywhere I have ever been.  It's a little run down, but still clearly developed, and I can only imagine how different it must be during summertime.  Our hotel (resort, really) is out of town, but we can easily get to the city center on a bus that stops nearby, so it's not a problem.

The currency here is a happy departure from the Swiss franc.  They use the Kuna here, and the exchange rate is about 5 Kuna to 1 USD.  It's nice.  What's even nicer is that everything is so much cheaper here than it would be in Switzerland!  I was shopping today and saw something I liked.  When I picked it up to look at the price, I saw 12 and thought that was a reasonable price.  I was thinking 12 francs (about 12 USD).  So I while I considered 12 francs a fair price, they considered 12 kuna a fair price!  That's under 3 dollars!  Plus movies here are 15 kuna.  THAT'S 3 DOLLARS.  It's incredible how grateful I am for these prices after living for 3 months in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

A few of us went on a walk down by the water the other day.  Over the course of the walk, I really came to appreciate Pula.  It was a semi-stormy day, so the water kind of had that angry tinge to it.  It kept crashing up on the rocks and generally being awesome.  I took about a million pictures, because I just couldn't get over how gorgeous it was.  I live a very blessed life.

Just a resting point on our walk.  My life is so far from average.

You'll find me in that place where the sea meets the sky

The countdown to Phoenix has now reached 10 days.  I'm still not feeling ready.  I was hoping at this point I would be extraordinarily  homesick or exhausted or broke or something.  Anything to make me feel like I want to leave and go back to the states.  But that's not the case.  I am excited to see everyone and to be home for Christmas, but it's going to be hard.  It's going to be hard to enter back into my stateside reality, where I'm not lucky enough to spend every waking minute walking through scenes worthy of a post card.  I've started to consider myself lucky that I always feel so chagrined to leave the place I was staying, whether it be Washington, Geneva, or Croatia.  I think it means that, while I'll always have these little pinpricks in my heart where those places belong, I was lucky to have that.  I know not everyone is able to travel like I have been able to, and I am so grateful for the opportunities and the guts to do so.

10 days until I'm among the cacti once again.  Everyone has to return to their roots now and then!

See you all soon.

Everywhere I seem to be, I am only passing through.

"So I'll sit perfectly still
And I'll listen for a tune
While my mind is on the moon."

Let's be really honest for a moment and admit this:  I am the queen of denial.  I can't admit to myself that in two days, I am leaving Geneva.  Maybe not forever, but for the foreseeable future.  And while this semester has had its trials and tribulations, I am not ready to leave.

So my head is convincing me I have all the time in the world.  Of course, this causes logistical issues (such as packing...I haven't started yet).  But mostly it's just really hard to wrap my head around as I walk through Geneva.  I've been trying to force myself to understand that tomorrow... tomorrow?  It's a day of lasts.

Last walks to the bus stop, looking at the snow on the Jura
Last train rides
Last cafe au lait and pan au chocolat for breakfast
Last time flashing my badge to get past UN security
Last time studying in such an important place
Last views of the lake and the jet d'eau
Last time jay walking with the rest of the Genevoise
Last time getting lunch from Migros
Last dinner with my host family
Last night in my room with the Justin Bieber posters

I feel like I'm someone who understands and accepts change.  I move on when things get boring.  I'm a committment-phobe in many aspects of my life.  And yet, I'm not ready for this to end.  I'm not ready to go back to life in the states.  In the states, life is complicated.  Life is complicated by my history, by my future.  Life is complicated by obligations, by expectations.  This semester has been so removed from that; it has been freeing.  There will be no more weekend trips to the Alps.  There will be no more train rides to sort out my thoughts as the landscape beats by.  There will be no more of that.  It will be an intermission in my relationship with Switzerland.  And I'm not feeling very ready for that intermission.

I know Croatia will be great fun, and I'm looking forward to that.  I am also looking forward to seeing my family and friends back in the states.  But does it have to be so soon?

I just want time to stand still for once in my life.  I want to stop moving so fast.  I want to break this cycle of leaving people who are important to me because my transient lifestyle necessitates it.  But this isn't possible.  The best I can do is try to keep sprinting along in time to catch every moment as it comes, because I'm sure as hell not going to miss anything because I'm looking over my shoulder.

Genève, tu vas me manquer.

"Tell the ones who need to know..."

"...we are headed North."

Or rather, I just returned from the North.  But it still seemed fitting (this post's title brought to you by The Avett Brothers).

This last weekend, I made a trip to Norway to visit Katie!  There were three main motivations for my visit.

1. To see Katie, who I missed (and miss again...already) immensely.

2. To see the place where Glenn studied abroad.

3. To hopefully visit a magical, snowy, winter wonderland.

I was not disappointed on a single front!

I started off my adventure with a bang.  European men are rather pushy and aggressive, and this one man would simply not leave me alone on the train.  I eventually got rid of him, but the funny part was that he initially told me he was from the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union??  Instead of making fun of him or making some comment I might have made if I were not alone, I asked "Umm, where in the Soviet Union?"  He told me he was from Chechnya.  I guess they're a little behind the times in Chechnya and still think the Soviet Union exists...

I got in on Friday night and was met at the train station in Hamar by Katie and Noreen.  We had a joyous  little reunion and then walked to their apartment building.  It was pretty cold, but I packed a ton of warm things at Katie's suggestion, so I was good to go.  We dropped my stuff off and went grocery shopping.  I've decided that one of my favorite things to do in a foreign country is go grocery shopping because you see real people in their normal lives and what they actually eat.  In Norway, I was jealous of the Mexican food aisle and disgusted by the fish in a tube.  We then had family dinner, and played some Spanish drinking games.  After so many months of French, it was fun to hear Spanish spoken again.  The people we were playing with were from Spain, so the accent was different from what I'm accustomed to, but I could still understand enough to chuckle a little when one of the girls said something, paused, and then said that we couldn't understand her.  Oh, the joys of understanding other languages.  During this period of time, it began to snow!  We went dancing, had late night kebabs, and then went to bed.

The next day, there was definitely snow on the ground, which excited me greatly.  Katie and Noreen took me to Lillehammer to go to the Nansen Center (where they're doing their field work) and their teacher/advisor/mentor/brunette Santa Claus took us around the city and got us into a couple of museums for free.  Lillehammer was absolutely gorgeous covered in snow.  It took us a while to actually get to the Nansen Center from the train station because we all kept stopping to take pictures.  But how could we stop ourselves??

Probably the most Christmas-y thing I've ever seen

Gorgeous church and cemetary in Lillehammer

See what I mean?  Stunning.  I think my favorite part of the day was going to the Olympic jump.  It may be because I'm such a geek for the Olympics, but I always get overly excited to see anything linked to the Olympics (remember my trip to the Olympic museum in Lausanne?  Yeah, I turn into a giddy five year old).  Their advisor (or whatever he is) Steinar, drove us to the top, and then we climbed the millions of stairs down and he picked us up at the bottom.  That was definitely the way to do it; I would NEVER want to climb UP all those stairs.  But the view was absolutely gorgeous and we had a wonderful time traipsing through the snow, and - at least in my case - pretending we were Olympians.

Nothing like a good, steep drop.

Katie and I at a flat portion of the ski jump area.  Note the snow covering our shoes (mine are originally all black).  Thank goodness for water proofing agents!

After this, we went to a museum that had a Munch/Warhol exhibit (Warhol twice in one year?  What lucky lives we lead).  We went back to Hamar at some point - I'm really iffy on the time because I was thrown off by how much earlier it gets darker in Norway than in Geneva.  I shouldn't have been surprised. - and had taco night!  Mexican food is one of the things I miss the most about the states, so this was a very good thing.

We then had movie night.  I have to elaborate on this to prove that Katie is the absolute best friend ever.  One night last Spring, we didn't want to go out with everyone else, so we convinced Jenn and Deanne to let us stay in their room for the evening.  We watched Bring It On together, and at the end of the night, Jenn returned to find Katie asleep on her bed with a muffin in hand, and me with cornrows in my hair (courtesy of Katie) singing along to "Hey Mickey" by myself.  Needless to say, this is one of my favorite nights on record.  Katie surprised me in Norway by getting a projector from school and getting Bring It On, so we had a mini-reprise of that night.  It was the best :)

Sunday we bummed around the apartment and had a relaxing day seeing the sights in Hamar.  It's a really pretty little town, made even prettier by the wintry atmosphere.

Lake Mjosa by afternoon sunset

Once again, Katie is the best ever, and understood that I wanted to see all the places Glenn saw as a way to connect with him from thousands of miles away.  As such, after a dinner of fried rice, she and Noreen took me to the Hydranten, which is the student bar in town.  We had a fun evening there laughing at the Norwegians singing along (quite robustly) to songs such as "Living on a Prayer."  We decided to leave when Katie's ghost struck.  The first time this weekend we experienced the ghost was when there was chocolate mysteriously missing from the fridge.  We had bought a couple of bars to break up for cookies, and one morning there was just a row missing from one of the bars.  We had no idea who did it or when it possibly could have happened (or why they didn't go for the Swiss chocolate I had brought...).  Ghost!  At the Hydranten, the ghost reappeared when a few votive candles fell off a ledge and splattered wax all over the back of Katie's shirt.  I literally do not think there is an explanation in line with the laws of physics for how this happened.  Ghost.

Monday, we hung around the apartment, made breakfast sandwiches around noon, and then I hit the road in the early afternoon.  Overall, it was a wonderful trip :)

As of today, I have 5 days left in Geneva.  After these 5 days are up, I have 18 days in Croatia, and then I head back to Phoenix.  I honestly had no idea time could pass this fast.  It seem surreal that I'm already at the end of this semester.  I'm not ready for it to be over!  I think I might be ready to be back in the states soon, but I'm not ready to leave Europe.  I want to be in two places at once, and sometimes I don't want to be in any of the places.  How is this possible?  Well, I guess the only way to live life is to roll with the punches and go where the wind takes you.  Currently, the wind is compelling me to work on my ISP, so I must conclude this mammoth of a post.  Love you all, miss you all, and will see you all soon!

Home is Wherever I'm With You

And THIS entry's title is brought to you not by Josh Ritter (please, contain your shock) but by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.  Hooray for change!

I seem to be falling behind in my correspondence these days and for that I apologize!  It was now a week ago that I visited my friend Jenn in Ireland.  So let's talk about it now!

First and foremost, it was so wonderful to see Jenn.  The moment I saw her, a sort of calm descended on me.  It was like I could let go and just hang out with my best friend, who I trust with every minute secret in my life.  The first night, I arrived in Galway fairly late at night, hurriedly got dressed in my Halloween costume, and we went out to the club.  I really am going to miss being able to go to clubs when I get back to the states.  I mean, first of all I won't be able to legally drink for another 7 months, and secondly the clubs in the states gross me out.  Sorry, off topic.

Over the course of the next couple of days, we explored the city of Cork, wandered around Galway quite a bit, and did many classically Irish things (go to the Saturday market, eat fish and chips, walk along the water, get caught in crazy rain, have a guinness at a pub that has live Irish music, etc.)  I had so much fun.  It's funny, because Ireland is now the first place I have visited that was exactly what I expected.  I don't know if it's because Jenn described it so well or because we did all the cliche things, but the scenery, the people, the buildings, the activities, etc. were very much what I expected, which was really amusing and awesome.

Mostly, it was just so great to spend time with Jenn.  For all I cared, we could have spent the weekend in her apartment.  After spending so much time away from everyone I know and love, it was refreshing and invigorating to see her.  We spent a lot of time catching up and having deep talks about this moment in our lives.  It really feels like we're at such a juncture in our lives where we're living the dream and trying to figure out where to go from here.  It's a lot of fun, but a lot of pressure.  To talk to someone who so fully understands who I am, where I'm coming from, what I want to do/be, and the way I think?  It felt so good and relieved so much of the underlying stress I previously had not admitted to myself.  It was incredibly difficult to say goodbye at the end of the trip, knowing I won't see her again until January.  Hopefully the time will fly!


Back in Switzerland...we're in the middle of our ISP period, which is the month in which we have no scheduled classes.  It's all time for research and interviews and writing our 30 page paper that's due the day before Thanksgiving.  I have never devoted myself so fully to a subject before, and it feels good.  It feels good to dive headlong into a topic and to try to forge connections and provide analysis that is original.  It feels good to be so focused and so enjoying it that I know that I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing.

Everyday I go to the UN library to do research and work.  I flash my badge, go through the metal detector, and head to the library building, where I spend much of the day reading books and doing work online.  It's intense, but it's fun.  It's especially fun when I realize how much I feel I'm a part of the rhythm here.  I know some of the security guards, and we chat when I walk in.  I get annoyed on heavy tourist days, and find myelf hurrying along with other people (who are surely more important than I).  It makes me feel very grown up, which is terrifying.  But it also makes me feel like I'm playing dress-up in some more legitimate person's life, which is really fun.

This morning, there was snow on the mountains and the water of the lake was very calm.  I'm going to miss this place.  If I don't count days I'm spending in Norway, I only have 8 days left in Switzerland.  EIGHT DAYS.  It's absolutely unreal how fast time is passing.  And then I have to return to real life?  Yikes.