Time is Flying!
Hi everyone! Sorry it’s been a minute since my last update, I’ve just been living it up here and have forgotten to update everyone on my amazing adventure! I am so happy with how things are going, my research is going really well and the post-doc I have been working with has been fantastic! We are really excited to continue to work towards getting our research published in the near future! I promise I do study (occasionally ;)) and take some French classes, but those are boring to write about so I’m going to jump right into the fun and exciting things I’ve been able to do in my spare time that I’m not researching!
March 16th:
My friends and I got some free tickets with our student cards to a local classic music concert! It was so great and I was truly amazed at the talent of the musicians. It was a small ensemble with a harp, violin, viola, flute, and cello. They played a variety of new music that was specifically written for them and it was beautiful.
March 18th:
Off to France! Today we went to a beautiful town called Annecy and it should definitely be on everyone’s list of places to go if you are in Geneva. Its a quick 1 hour train ride and the views were incredible. We spent the day walking around, seeing a cool castle, and eating French pastries… which is my definition of a perfect day!
March 25th:
The evening of the 24th I was in the kitchen cooking some dinner with Fanny and Nea and Fanny mentioned that she saw an ad for a chocolate festival going on this weekend that was near Geneva. After looking at the website for about 5 seconds and finding out there would be over 30 chocolate vendors in one location giving out free samples… I was in.
The next day we took a 40 minute train ride to Versoix and went to “Festichoc”. It was artisan chocolate so there were some very cool displays of sculptures made entirely out of chocolate. My friend Jess who is from England was very excited about the “Big Ben” sculpture as you’ll see in the photo’s. We walked around and sampled all different kinds of chocolate and by 1pm I was absolutely sugared- out!
April 1st:
I was asked to help out with the ward easter party for the kids, so I woke up and headed to the church. I had a fun time setting up and hiding the eggs all over the building for the kids to find. I completely forgot to take pictures, but I still had a great time! I love the ward here in Geneva and really enjoy working with primary kids because I don’t get to do that in my singles ward in Utah!
Later that evening I had dinner with my friends. Anna and Nea both had birthday’s so they planned a dinner and night out to celebrate and invite a bunch of us. We went to this really fancy Italian restaurant and there were 10 of us total. At the beginning of the meal the waitress asked us if we would like water, to which we replied “yes, tap water”. Now it’s important to note that tap water is free in Switzerland (it is also the best water you will ever have in your life). The entire staff of the restaurant was Italian and spoke very limited English, so when we asked for tap water in English our waitress responded with “still water” also in English, and we said yes. She then said it in French and the few people who spoke French said “yes” to the word she had said.
The night continues on, we get our water and we constantly had to ask for more because it was a pretty small bottle and there were 10 of us. The meal was amazing and it comes time to pay and we are handed the bill… they charged us $50 for the water! We were super confused because we had specified at the beginning of the meal that we wanted tap water and not sparkling water. Then Naela who is from France (she was late to the beginning of the dinner so she missed the ordering of the water) goes to the manager to see why we were charged $50 for water.
All of us are just sitting there and the manager starts yelling at Naela in French so Naela starts yelling right back, and the entire restaurant is watching. It was so uncomfortable so I and the other non-confrontational people in my group just agreed that we would pay for it. In the end, we did end up paying for it and I now know that just regular “still water” and “tap water” are different. So just know if you want to have free water in Switzerland you need to say “Eau du Robinet”, otherwise you might get charged $50 extra.
April 2nd:
I didn’t have any church services this week because of General Conference, and with the time difference it didn’t air in Switzerland until the evening. So I went to “Watches and Wonders” for the day.
I had no idea what a big deal luxury watches were before moving here, but I have learned so much about them in the last 2 months. There is this big event each year held in Geneva where all of the luxury watch brands come together to show off their new watches for the upcoming year. The first few days is only for the press, celebrities, and watch makers. The last two days were opened to the public with the purchase of some tickets. I went with my my Swiss friend who is very knowledgeable when it comes to luxury watches and he gave me the history on all the brands and I feel like I learned so much that I am now an armature watch expert!
Other things I did that are worth noting:
I went on a nice rainy walk the other day
I asked Nea if she would play the piano for a musical number at my church and she said she would do it if I agreed to sing. So I asked one of the sister missionaries to sing with me and we’ve been having some great practices getting ready for our performance this upcoming Easter Sunday.
I love volunteering in the local soup kitchen each week!
Weekly trips to Annemase, France to grocery shop because its way to expensive in Switzerland!
Discovered a great bakery close to my apartment!
Had some fondue on a boat for a school activity!
Well that’s all I have for you! I hope you all have an amazing week… until next time!
Culture Shocks and Interesting Discoveries
Swiss people don’t just say “Bye” and then leave. Instead, they “slowly go”. For example; if you are on the phone with a Swiss person they will say “I have to slowly go now” and then you won’t hang up for another 5 minutes. They will even say “alright I have to go… and then will keep talking”. They also say multiple goodbyes. Its not just “Au Revior”, instead they will say “bye, have a good night, see you later, so good seeing you, ok bye now” (but in French of course) and I think it is so funny.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the people here are SO well dressed. If you walked out in a fitted suit in the US and were just walking around, everyone would assume you were going somewhere very fancy or to a big event. Here that is nothing special and you will see people dressed to the 9’s riding the busses on a Tuesday afternoon.
Going along with the well dressed people- the store mannequins here are the most stylish mannequins I’ve ever seen in my life.
There are fountains of water all over the city and its a *literal* drinking fountain so you can fill your water bottle up using the water from this big beautiful fountain.
