Schokolade

Fun story time. There are a lot of French Swiss here. Like, 2/3 of the students at my language school are French Swiss, so naturally I have befriended some of them. One of them, Tom, is often trying to get me to help improve his English, specifically his pronunciation. One of the words that he has trouble pronouncing is "chocolate." Today I was hanging out with a group of people (only 2/6 are French Swiss, although a third spoke French as his native language). Of these people I only knew three of them previously, the rest were new. So, while we were hanging out the word "chocolate" came up for some reason and Tom asked me to pronounce it. So I said "Chocolate," and the guy standing next to me, who is from Britain says: "Wow. That's a very American pronunciation." Laughter ensued. And so, that is my funny story for the month. I will try to work on my comedy skills before next month. I'll also try to write a post about my trip to Berlin, soon!

My First Week

I finally managed to make my way over to the grocery store and in doing so, I found some stores that I'm sure some of you will appreciate when it comes time for me to do some Christmas shopping. I found an amazing stationary store, a pet store, two books stores, and, best of all, a chocolate store. I may need to sample the chocolate store's goods a few dozen times before I can be positive that it's good enough to give as gifts.

Some of you might know that I recently got a FitBit. It's been very interesting because, it measures how active I am, how many steps I take, miles I walk, floors I climb, and the length and quality of my sleep. Even though I only had it for a week before I left, I can also use it to compare how active I was at home vs. here. For example, even though I have way more active minutes (ten or more minutes in a row where my heart-rate is above normal) here than at home, I am in general walking fewer steps. This probably has something to do with the fact that every time I leave the flat to go out on the street, I have to walk four flights of stairs to get back up to my room. Although, with the fact that the ceilings are probably somewhere around 12+ feet tall, I'm really probably walking up at least five stories worth of stairs everytime. For example, my FitBit measured me climbing 37 flights of stairs on Monday alone. Thirty-seven. Maybe I'll go to the Grand Canyon when I get home in May.

I know many of you *cough* mom *cough* have been clamoring for photos of where I live, so I have decided to give in.

My room has a chandelier. How awesome it that??

My transportation to Narnia

Baked potatoes are amazing anywhere in the world

My view!

Also my view!

Other things I've learned since I've been here:

• Netflix is not the same
• My Spanish will most likely get at least slightly better
• There is no Pandora Radio :(
• It may not get as cold as Chicago, but it gets cold sooner
• I can bowl without bumpers!
• English is apparently not as hard to learn as I have been told