I'm On FIRE!!

One of the lovely things about living in Switzerland is that any regard for safety is mostly pushed to the side. Because of this I have been able to enjoy many things that would be violating many safety codes had we been in the US. One of the best has been Basel's Fasnacht. A celebration in which they "scare" winter away. This is a 72 hour celebration starting with...wait for it...a FIRE PARADE!!!! In a neighboring town, Liestal, they put on a fire parade to help scare away winter. There is fire EVERYWHERE. I mean EVERYWHERE. There are large wagons of fire coming down the street and people holding large torches of fire. There are children carrying mini torches and practically running down the hill while the men try and stop the large wagons from going out of control. We managed to get a front row seat to all of this and almost burned alive from the heat alone. and now some pictures:

confetti was EVERYWHERE. ps the girl on the right? totally photobombed.

those are the torches that were lit

unsure about the confederate flag

whit, zoe, me and Michelle hanging at the fire parade.

MAckenzie and I look at the fire!

the torches

never been so hot in my life.

the torches on FYAHH

 After the fire parade there was some waiting around, in whihc afew of us went to Olin and Nikki's house in order to get at least a few hours of sleep before the 4am parade of lights in Basel. Not as cool as basel but still pretty fun. Unfortunately no pictures of those. It was basically colored lanterns and people in masks playing either the drums or the piccolo. (SO. MANY. PICCOLOS.) loud and high pitched. Just what you want at 4am on monday morning!

That one time when I went skiing!

I recently got a new computer and can now add pictures to my blog posts! I uploaded 200 pictures to my computer and im the process of editing for viewing pleasure!
WAYYYYY back in January my brother hosted a ski weekend with him and 30 of their closest friends. I being the awesome sister that I am got to invite a few friends up with me. One friend who had never skied in her life (michelle), one friend who had been skiing a few times (Nicole) and one friend who was basically professional (Anna), and then me on a snowboard (read: BEGINNER). We were definitely the youngest by about 6 years. We arrived on Friday night by way of train bus and TBAR. Nicole and Michelle and I started up as the last ones on the TBar. I was going to go last as the most experienced of the 3 but after being yelled at in Swiss German to get on the TBar ended up first, a bad idea...., Michelle managed to get up to the top fine without any problems (Amazing for a first time on skis ever!) This left Nicole who managed to get only halfway up the mountain before falling off the TBar and having to ski back down. First lesson. Always sit on the tbar, holding it with your arms will not get you up the mountain and instead leave enormous bruises.
After arriving and a pretty good night of fun, we woke early the next morning (hangovers be damned)  and began our first attempt at Michelle learning to ski. First off, I am in no way a ski instructor. I don't even remember learning how to ski and so to teach someone else was basically disaster. After telling Michelle just to turn and just go, i gave up and let michelle take the reins of teaching herself. She was successful at walking down. I was more just impressed she got down the mountain. I, didn't quite make it. I was over confident in my snowboarding skills and on the last day after not taking the TBar on saturday or sunday (do you know how difficult it is to TBar up a mountain on a snowboard? SO HARD.) I ended up snowboarding part of the way and then sliding down on my butt the rest of the way figuring I could get down quicker on my butt than on my board. Clearly, I am cut out for the professional leagues here.
Overall, we all had a lot of fun talking to real live adults (!!!) and "skiing" we managed to laugh most of our terrible skiing and snowboarding off and really have a great time!
Now for some pictures:

Michelle's first attempt at skiing

Our House for 30+ people

view from the house

skiing makes look super attractive

another view from the house. It was pretty incredible skiing in the Alps!s

Day Trip to Basel

Last weekend, I hit up Basel yet again, only this time armed with an agenda and a few friends. We were headed to the Andy Warhol exhibit of his early drawings and then 2 friends and I were heading to Olin and Nikki's to make dinner!

I met up with about 6 au pairs for the day. We took the train at around 10:15 and met up with another au pair friend who was already in Basel for the weekend, Angela. From there Angela, who lived in Basel for a year a couple years ago, took us on a small tour of Kleine Basel before we headed to the exhibit. she told some history of Basel which was nice to get a bit of background. We then headed to the Basel Art Museum. The exhibit although small was an interesting look at the advertisements that Warhol did as well as his early drawings of Campbell's Chicken soup. (Kate Lutes if you read this- there was the 4 Elvis and the 2 Elvis painting. made me think of you)

We then headed to a cafe area and proceeded to chat in true au pair fashion for the next 2.5 hours. Nicole, Michelle and I then left to make dinner. Michelle and I were ready to make a nice pasta dinner with Garlic bread and salad. Nicole on the other hand decided the best dinner would be cereal. With Milk. We decided to agree to disagree and let Nicole buy her cereal. (There was lots of judgement on my part though... haha) Some pictures from the day:

Most of the au pairs that I went with. I think we are only missing Nicole in this one.
L-r Crystal, Michelle, Angela and Merrin


Nicole had never seen a squash this big...She was really excited if you can't tell


Eating our yummy dinner! (Note Nicole's bowl of Cereal...)

Nikki and Olin joined later for dinner and we all enjoyed ourselves immensely (I think?), until...I realized the time. It was 11:30 and the last train was at 12:15. We made it there with a few minutes to spare forgetting the fact that we had to actually get home from the Zurich Train Station. We arrive at 1:20am. In Switzerland, almost everything closes on Sunday. We didn't realize this included night train's and buses...We ended up taking a cab back to my apt. because luckily I live apart from the family and am able to host people when needed. They had to get up at 445am to catch the first train back to their respective houses to start work in time. It was an experience that I have definitely learned from. Always check how to get home before the last minute!

The time where I actually remember to post....

Okay, so it has been a little over two weeks since I've posted. Things here have been good. I'll get caught up over this week hopefully so that I don't make an excruciatingly long post so that you can pace yourself with my incredibly interesting and fabulous life!(note sarcasm)

I left off last Saturday with the whole eating chestnut meat. Sunday Olin, his friend Barry, and I went off on a tour around Basel and France and Germany for Basel's annual(?) slow-up where they close a bunch of roads and only let bikers and rollerbladers through. We rode about 50km pretty easy riding. I have to admit that my butt was EXTREMELY sore the next day. Some pictures:

Ready to Go!


Almost done!


Total KM. Not sure if that is our average speed....

The rest of last week was pretty uneventful. I continued to hit my head against a wall in German class but also learned to french braid my hair! (Mom and Dad, I know you're so proud!)I am going to try and teach myself the second half of the A1 class and then continue to A2 in November. I am moving to a different school that is only 2 hours a week as opposed and moves at a bit faster pace! As of this past Friday the class finished.

Next up Last weekend's adventures to somewhere I have only been about 5 times in the past 6 weeks here...BASEL!

Meine Wohnung

Pictures of my apartment! It's pretty small- think a little bigger than dorm room size but it's very cute. They decorated well, I think!

The kitchen and bathroom are to your left right when you walk in. The kitchen has a small oven and you can see the hotplate. The bathroom is your average one!

This is the desk and chair area. To the right is a bookcase and chair you can see below. The view is right at ground level but it's green instead of concrete which is nice!

The chair! I like the stripe curtains a lot!

My bed! There are lots of pillows on it which I like and if you look closely you might be able to find yourselves on the shelf!

That's pretty much it. I am planning on making some collage posters of pictures to put up on the walls which will make it more me. I really like the colors that they chose though!

I spent Thursday afternoon and Friday I spent walking around Zurich which was really nice to see. It was kind of rainy but overall good. I was able to get down to the lake to do a bit of reading and a bit of people watching which was particularly nice! Saturday I went to see Olin and Nikki for the day and we ran errands, made tortillas, hummus, chocolate chip pie and lasagna, and relaxed. They had some friends over for dinner as well which was fun!
I'm on my own all day tomorrow so we shall see how that goes!

occupation: housewife!

This past Saturday and Sunday I spent the weekend with Olin and Nikki as well Nikki's father and his wife. We did a lot of walking around and floating down the river, which was a lot of fun! You get to float a long ways down the river and they have these bags to put all your stuff in as you float down so it won't get wet. They look like fish as you can see:
They are very handy to have as we walked pretty far up in order to float down back to where our bikes were. After this and some Bananagrams playing during the weekend, I was off Monday to Zurich just in time for dinner with the family.
A little about the family. The mom and dad both work outside the home, one in music the other in science. They are both very prominent in their fields, and the mom travels quite a bit for her job. here on out they will be known as H(mom) and S(dad). They have two little girls who are 4(J) and 8(M). They are the sweetest little girls and in my few days of knowing them are very well behaved. J is in kindergarten every morning until 12pm, while M is in 3rd grade full time. The schedule for school varies depending on the day and so my schedule is never the same on any given day.
The family has been so welcoming and they have been slowly helping me get into a routine. As the title says, essentially I am a housewife. I am doing a lot of the washing, I help with lunch and dinner, I do a lot of dishes and make sure the girls are doing what they need to get done, whether it be homework or practicing for M or simply playing with J. The mom, H, would like to add a few more things into the mix this year like a weekly library date and having me work a little on rhythms and notes with M. J does not play an instrument yet although desperately wants to play violin. The dad, S, has asked that if I can help J to learn some tunes on the piano that this would be great fun for J. I am not so sure about that, but I guess we will see as time goes on. My days generally are 1-2 hours of housework in the morning including making lunch and dinner prep, as well as laundry and making of the girls beds. Then either I or H pick up Julia from kindergarten and have lunch ready for her. Because H will be gone for the next week, I have had to pick up the routine fairly quickly. Luckily her mother is coming into town to help out with the girls. This is followed by some play time and waiting for M to get home from school. Then M does her homework while J and I play or help to make dinner of some sort. Once Dinner and dishes are done, I am generally off the hook for the rest of the evening.
Other than getting into a routine here I have been unable to do much else as I am living with the family until this weekend because my apartment is being repainted and new things were added. I was able to see the apartment however and it is very much like a dorm room. I will post pictures later but it's got a small kitchenette and bathroom and then the bedroom area with a desk and chair. I am moving my stuff in this weekend but will stay with the family until Monday.
I was able to go to a coffee meet up to meet some other au pairs which went okay. It'll be hard to make friends here I think with my wacky schedule but I hope to make some soon! I am meeting another au pair tomorrow and then will attend the coffee thing next week as well I hope! My German classes start a week from this Monday and I will be taking intensive German from 8:30am-12:30pm 5 days a week. I'm not sure how this will go but hopefully I will be able to pick it up fairly quickly.
The family also has a soundproof music room that I am able to use which includes a baby grand piano and lots of music! I have a found a few music stores and am hoping to find more in order to get some music to learn. I am hoping to find a voice teacher in October after my German lessons are done to start doing some Jazz but will wait a little bit before I start looking.
The family is gone this weekend so I will be sightseeing around Zurich and might head to see Olin and Nikki for the day or something like that.
Whew! Sorry for the long post. They will get shorter I promise! and updated more often!

I have arrived!

I have arrived in Basel! After a pretty short 6.5 hour flight I took the train (with ALL of my luggage....) and met Nikki at the Basel station. A very nice couple helped me on and off the train with my 3 roll-y suitcases and 2 other carry-ons...(luckily the lady who checked me in was very kind and let me put 5kgs extra in each of my suitcases!).
While Thursday was spent sleeping, today I was able to walk around the city for most of the day. Basel is a small city but very cute! I saw a the main Marktplatz, the Munster (city's cathedral), and people watch in one of Nikki's favorite cafe's. I was able to meet up with Nikki and Olin for lunch and then do some more wandering by the River and stopped to catch up on a little reading. Like Zurich, Basel has a rive in the city which the people use to float down the river. I'm hoping to take advantage of that here before I leave and in Zurich! After work Olin, Nikki, and I rode bikes down to the river and met up with some of Nikki's lab for drinks and watch the sunset. Very nice and relaxing!!
One thing I am definitely realizing I will need is a bike for Zurich. It seems to be easier and faster to get around on a bike than on the bus and Tram system. I am here for a few more days and the au pairing adventure begins on Tuesday!