In an effort to stay #relevant with my friends and family, I am posting again.
We have played two matches so far in our Swiss league. We lost our home opener to Sm’Aesch Pfeffingen in 4 and beat Kanti Schaffhausen in 3. Basically no one played well in our first match and everyone played well in the second. So that’s good news: if we play well, we win…encouraging stuff. We play our first away match tonight in Bern against Koniz.
Going to Biel on Thursdays has become a sort of tradition for the foreigners. We head out after our lift in the morning, get Starbucks, walk around, shop for things we do not need, eat pastries we do not need, etc. and come back for late practice that night. Thursdays are a great day. I bought and used my first ever Lush bath-bomb (Lush is in Biel). Honestly, the best part was watching it fizz and turn the water green. I told myself that I was going to finish The Girls in the bath that night, but I made the water waaaaay too hot and I was sweating so much I could barely see my iPad, so I ended up taking a cold shower after the bath anyways. But dammit I finished the book. Dehyrdation and all. Not the relaxing experience I was planning.
Just as Z and I were getting the hang of the laundry machine in our building, they went and bought a new one. But they also bought….wait for it….A DRYER. For a few days, the machines were free bc they hadn’t installed the card system to pay. But then they did and failed to give anyone the new cards, so literally no one in the building could do laundry for three days. This happened to fall at the exact time that I ran out of practice shirts. But then…wait for it…our team got laundry machines in our gym! So now we can do laundry during practice for free. It’s amazing. It’s great. I haul my dirty clothes through the car dealership and past the mall on our walk to practice once a week now and I don’t mind one single bit bc free laundry is a luxury that I cherish dearly.
Z and I also had to exchange our wifi router for a newer version this past week. Which neither of us was keen to do bc it meant unplugging the wifi router…and who knows if it would ever work again…which is terrifying when your life revolves around internet connection. It ended up working out fine but I think the 45 mins we had to wait for the new router to start up was the most helpless I’ve felt in a while.
My weeks are beginning to fill up and resemble a semi-normal kind of busy life. I’m very excited about it. The other day I was looking back at my calendar from when I was still in school and it is PACKED with stuff every single day. And now my calendar has two, maybe three, blocks on each day but I’m exhausted every night. I slept from 8 pm – 9 am four nights ago. Lame. Anyways. We have officially started French lessons as of last Tuesday. I have deemed the hour and twenty minutes, “French by Fire” bc although we’re in a beginner class, we missed the first few sessions. And our teacher doesn’t speak a lot of English. She’s super nice and I’m really happy to be learning French but holy crap I still hate language classes. Spanish class was the most stressful period of the day in high school and that has not changed. I just sit there and sweat bc I’m terrified that I’m going to get cold called. I’m not even getting a grade but my anxiety doesn’t care. On top of French class, the foreign players are required to coach one Juniors practice per week. So every Wednesday at 4 pm, this girl is going to be trying not to pull my hair out teaching 6 year olds how to serve. I like kids. And I like coaching. I don’t like coaching kids. There are bound to be some good stories coming out of this in the future.
Last week we went to Solothurn to hang out with Carole in her hometown. It was super cute. It’s a lot like Neuchatel except the lake is a river. Solothurn also has a famous cake that I forget the name of but it has meringue and mousse in it and it was bomb. We tried Maroni and thought they were some exotic European nuts and thought we were real cultured until yesterday when Michaela’s mom told us they were chestnuts.
Speaking of Michaela’s mother (Teresa is a gem), we picked her up from the Geneva airport this past weekend. Her flight was delayed getting in so we just parked Mic’s car at the nearest parking garage (which was a hotel’s parking garage, so we are not sure this was legal), and walked around Geneva for an hour or so. One of the famous lanmarks in Geneva is this fountain that just sprays straight up into the air but suuuper high. Mic thought it was beautiful but, forgive me, I didn’t get it. It looked like a pipe burst and no one had fixed it yet. Idk, I took Art History last year and I know my prof would be annoyed with me saying ‘I don’t get it’ but like…just speakin my truth over here. While staring at this fountain, Mic and I got ‘Choco Cookie Macchiotos’ and (more) crepes while two guys played the accordion and ducks swam on the lake. I felt very posh.
Random Things:
In my first one on one video session with my coach, he said that I need to run faster to the net. It’s like Denise is following me.
We went to an Irish pub downtown two weeks ago. They had live music and the woman singing was awesome and she played American Pie and I can’t say I’ve ever screamed every lyric to a song louder. At this bar, I also met Kasey Crider’s doppelganger.
We went to a hockey game to watch Ségo’s boyfriend play last week. His team lost, but he got MVP of the game so it was okay.
I attended my first ever crepe party this week. They were mini size, but I probably ate 15 of them. Why don’t we eat more crepes in the US? Ugh. So good.
Living in between a lake and a mountain means that pretty much every day is gorgeous, but in the fall………..I’ve never been so in love with a city.
Happy birthday to: Mary Ellen Luck, Emily Luck, and Gillian Raikes. Three of the most intelligent, kind, and hilarious people I came to know at Stanford. I love you all and I hope you had wonderful birthdays. Especially bc they were within 3 days of each other.
Happy Halloween guys!!!
Love times a million,
Bugg
