Would You Like A Watch With Your Chocolate?

This past weekend I went on my first solo European adventure to Geneva, Switzerland, home of clocks/watches, swiss army knives, and of course swiss chocolates.  Switzerland is a place that I have always wanted to see so I'm really excited I finally had the opportunity to go.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great so I didn't have the best view of the Alps, but the lake was gorgeous and the city was really interesting.
Here's a quick play by play of my trip..

First, I arrived around 11pm Thursday night and contacted the person who was hosting me for that night.  I decided to use CouchSurfers for this trip because I was traveling by myself.  If you don't know what CS is, let me explain because it's totally freakin' awesome.  CS is an organization that allows people willing to host travelers to communicate with said travelers to create international friendships and fun traveling experiences.  I was really excited for this because CS would allow me to meet local people willing to show me around so I could enjoy a more authentic trip.  Or they could kill me and offer me as a human sacrifice to their god.

Unfortunately for  Genevovera, the imaginary god of Geneva, my hosts were the former.  My first night I stayed with some awesome students who gave me great advice about what to do in the city as well as other fun places to travel in Europe.  We shared a lot of stories and had a great time getting to know each other.  I was sad to leave them but I was also excited to meet the family who lived on the border of France and Switzerland that had offered to host me for the next two days.

I left my first host's apartment around 10am but had a few difficulties with the public transportation system so I didn't arrive in the neighborhood of my next hosts until around 1pm.  Geneva has a fairly good bus/tram system, but I don't speak a word of French so it was difficult to master it.  Also, I could not figure out how to pay for the bus.  So I didn't.  Sshhhhhh, don't tell.
I sent a few texts to my next hosts and tried calling because I was having a lot of trouble.  I had put money on my phone before I left Madrid but I completely underestimated how expensive it would be to communicate with people in France while I was still in Switzerland using a Spanish phone.  So as I arrived in the their town, my phone ran out of money.

I found a post office and tried to communicate that I needed to call the family I was staying with.  But as I've already said, I do not speak French.  This was a really weird experience because I'm constantly doubting my Spanish abilities so I didn't think twice about going to yet another foreign country, but in Switzerland/France I kept thinking how much easier it would be if I could speak in Spanish.  I may not speak fluently or without errors, but I am definitely able to communicate efficiently.  Being in a foreign country where I actually don't speak the language is kind of terrifying.  Luckily, I'm good at charades.  The family was called and came to pick me up at the post office.  The mother walked to the post office with her young son and daughter and welcomed me to their town.  She told me it was good that I could walk home with them because I would learn the easiest way to get to their apartment.

Here is what was apparently the easiest way to get to their apartment:
We walked to the end of the street and turned left on another street.  We walked on that street for a while and turned into a parking lot.  At the end of the parking lot we walked across a dirt path through a park-like field.  Then we walked between several rows of buildings that had tape across them with signs that looked like they said "No trespassing," but for all I know they said "Please duck under us so you can cut through other people's property and save time."  Then we walked up a grass hill and cut through a playground.  We headed straight for a huge hedge and then bent over to crawl under a hole in the hedge and squeeze by a large rock I can only assume was there to prevent people from ducking under the hedge.  We continued through to another field, walked through another parking lot, and arrived at their apartment.  By the way, I also had to do this at night when I was coming back from the city because this was the only way I knew how to go.

I had a fun time exploring Geneva, home of CERN, the UN, and other important buildings and monuments, but by far the most interesting part of my trip was this family.  The mother was a stay-at-home mom and she believed in "unschooling" her children.  She lets them do pretty much anything they want and teaches them when they want to learn something.  I asked if it was like homeschooling, but she said "No, it's unschooling."  The family is vegetarian and they eat many soy products but very few vegetables.  Before dinner they like to sit around the piano and sing together.  Cute, right?  Also, the family all sleeps in one room.  They have several bedrooms even after offering one to me, but they apparently like to all sleep together.  Cute....right?
On Saturday night they baked a cake and then rolled some dice to see who's birthday they would pretend it was.  Their son had chosen the lucky number so we sang to him and then ate the cake w/ some vanilla soy yogurt.  It was a strange experience, but they were very nice and I was provided with a bedroom and meals. 

As for my adventures in Geneva, I continued to use the buses and trams without paying and I was able to see the whole city.  The lake was gorgeous, I went to a couple different street markets, and of course the chocolate was amazing.  I even brought some home for my Spanish family.  They had chocolate stores everywhere and I was able to go into each one and ask for samples.  They also had about a billion watch stores.  Every street had multiple watch stores.  No one in this city has any excuse to ever be late for anything.

Overall it was a good weekend and I'm glad I went, although I definitely wish the weather had been better.  And I didn't have to sell any limbs while I was there even though I was told Geneva is the most expensive city in the world.  But when you CouchSurf, hop on and off buses without paying, and pretend to be interested in paying for chocolate to score free food, it's really not an expensive trip at all.

"IDK, My BFF Jill"

A couple nights ago the school hosted an event where Spanish students came to our school for a kind of meet-and-greet so everyone could make international friends.  The event itself was not done very efficiently, as some individual Americans ended up sitting with a whole group of Spaniards, whereas at another circle, a whole group of Americans was sitting with only one or two Spaniards.  After the ice-breaker (which by the way was no more fun in Spanish than it would have been in English), we were corralled into a different room with snacks and drinks.  The problem with this was that it was so crowded, you could barely hear what the person next to you was saying.  Everyone's voices rose to be heard about the others.  The language barrier combined with the insane noise level made it incredibly difficult to get to know anyone.

After about an hour of screaming "¿QUE ESTUDIAS?" and "¿DONDE ESTA LA MEJOR FIESTA?" people started to go their own ways, but a group of us decided to go to a nearby bar.  It was much easier to hear people speak there, and I ended up meeting some really nice Spanish students.  They wanted to practice their English and I wanted to practice my Spanish, so we stood there talking to one another in our less-than-mastered languages.  But it was actually a lot of fun.

I exchanged numbers with a couple of them and we said we'd see each other soon.  Today I went to text one of them to see if she wanted to do anything today.  I wasn't sure what language I should text in, but I decided to go with Spanish.  I spelled out every word correctly to avoid any possible miscommunications.   However, the message I received back looked like it was written in a language I had never before seen.  It took me a moment to realize that was I was reading was "Spanish Text Language" (henceforth referred to as STL).  Similar to "English Text Language," words were replaced by numbers, syllables were replaced by individual letters to shorten the length of the word, and phrases were replaced by acronyms.  I was completely unprepared for this, as my Spanish classes have always focused on proper grammar and vocabulary, with the occasional outdated colloquialism thrown in.

It took me a minute to decipher the code, but eventually I was able to understand what the message said.  Unfortunately, the person was not available this weekend but suggested another time we could meet up.  I knew I was unavailable for that time so I wrote back.  We texted each other back and forth for a while, and I found that STL was not so difficult to read.  I was even starting to substitute my own proper spelling for the trendy mistake-ridden language of the "hip" (something I rarely do in English).  This is something that is never taught in Spanish classes, but is nonetheless a very important part of becoming fluent.  Therefore, I propose that Syracuse University offer a class in STL for students who actually want to master the language.  The homework assignments should be to read and translate tweets in Spanish, and the exams should be to text the professor what you did the night before.

Would anyone else like to take this class?