la folie de voyager

The past couple of days I've gotten the opportunity to do a bit of traveling around europe! Last weekend I popped on over to Milan, Italy with Mylisha for the day. It's only a 3 hour train ride from our town, so we figured it was a good way to spend our saturday. While there I've decided after I master french (it will happen, I swear.) I will learn Italian!

The Duomo in the center of Milan

Free hugs in the train station <3 data-blogger-escaped-div="">

For St. Patrick's Day I went to Dublin, Ireland for a couple of days. For those of you who know the awesome travel writer Rick Steves, he has a son Andy who does weekend trips in Europe for people studying abroad. The program is called WSA (weekend student adventures) and each weekend he goes to a different city and organizes trips for college students. He has programs in Prague, Dublin, Paris, London, Swiss Alps, Rome and Barcelona. If you're ever studying abroad in Europe, I highly suggest you check out his program, because it was amazing.

The Liffey River that runs through the streets of Dublin

Learning to play the Irish national sport of Hurling! (not my idea of a good time...)

Our awesome Irish tour guide Stephen and Andy Steves!

Waiting for the parade to start with my roommates and our tour guide

Roommates out on the town!

The whole gang

Roommates!

They filmed scenes of PS I Love You near here

I met so many awesome people and had 4 jam packed days of fun! We had VIP tickets to the parade, toured the Guinness factory and got a bus tour out into the countryside. Going there was the best decision I've made so far this year.

Life's good.

Not really sure how to describe it, but I think I've finally reached that point where I'm just extremely content with my life in Switzerland. It took me a lot longer than other exchangies, but now that I'm there, I'm so happy! I've stopped missing the aspects of home that at one point made me horribly homesick. because the thing is, although those people and places are still missing from my life, I still have so much going for me. I've made amazing friends who have taught me so much, and they make up for the things from home that I'm lacking. Today I went over to Meredith's house (another exchangie from the US) and we messed around on her piano for literally 2 hours. I don't necessarily consider myself being talented on the piano, but it's something I've always fiddled with at home. For the past 7 months I've been trying to find a piano to play, and what do you know, it was right in front of me! It brought back memories of my life in Bay, playing songs that my mom taught me or ones my sister and I would try to play together. But it wasn't sad, if anything it made me happy to have those forgotten memories back in my mind. Afterwards, I went out to eat with my family at our favorite restaurant in town. The owner is a family friend and when I walked in he greeted me by singing Michelle Ma Belle and then said "it's good to be home, right?" because we seriously eat there every week and I've been 3 times in the past 5 days. I can greet the waitresses by name and can order without even glancing at a menu, because the truth is, it is home. Maybe not the restaurant specifically, but just Fribourg. I came over here completely alone and never imagined I was capable of creating a world I would love.

fasnacht

Ladies and gentlemen, I have discovered my new favorite holiday.

CARNAVAL!!!

and no, i'm not stupid, that is the french spelling of it. And in german it's called Fasnacht.

Carnaval is a catholic holiday that is celebrated right before lent. It's basically the same concept of mardi gras, just more hard core. It's a 5 day event where you party it up right before you have to stop drinking/partying/having fun during lent. It's europe's version of Halloween (if you recall, my halloween was rather uneventful and my family didn't even realize it was halloween.) This is the time of the year to dress up and party like crazy! Each town has their own carnaval for the most part, so I stayed in my town of Fribourg. I went into town friday night and saturday without a costume, and I literally felt like a freak. Sunday there was a parade during the day and then l'homme qui brûle (the burning man.) I'm still not exactly sure what the burning man symbolizes, but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it represents the end of winter. Tuesday night was the last night of Carnaval, so I dressed up and danced the night away! Enjoy some marvelous pictures below!

The parade! Confetti was everywhere and covered my clothes/hair/purse, therefore covering my house once I got home.

Saturday night with Mylisha and Grace

Mario!

L'homme qui brûle

Every single swiss student has this brand of highlighters.

At the parade with Mylisha

Grace and some NASA guys

Banana and the bee!

Je peux!

The other day I was talking to another exchangie here in Switzerland, and we hadn't seen each other in a while so we were catching up on stories, all in french. She stopped me half way through a story to tell me that my french has improved a lot. She reminded me of our second day in Switzerland. We met for the first time and she asked "comment t'appelle tu?" (what's your name?) and my response was a blank stare. I had no idea what she asked me and I told her that I couldn't speak french.

Recently, I've had numerous people telling me that I haven't progressed, that my french sucks, that I'm not trying and the list goes on and on. and sadly, I believed them. I was disappointed in myself and began to think of all the things I still couldn't understand. But all I needed was a slight reminder of where I was on my first day, completely lost and understanding nothing. I couldn't conjugate verbs, I could only speak in the present tense. I had no idea what I was doing. So for all the people telling me I suck, please keep in mind that although I'm nowhere near to fluent, I can still do it and I've worked so hard to be where I am. I just read a 400 page book in french and understood it all. If that's not improvement, I don't know what is.